Professional Development

Trellis and Thrive have committed to working together to create the Professional Body for Social & Therapeutic Horticulture (STH).
Practitioners across the sector have been calling for a professional body dedicated to STH and Trellis has been working towards this for many years. In 2021 we began running a Professional Development Forum, meeting quarterly and more recently we invited Thrive to join us in this work. Practitioners felt that it should be led by Trellis and Thrive as the experts in this field.

We will be sharing our knowledge, pooling resources and aligning our efforts. We’re similar organisations with different strengths and a shared objective to see social & therapeutic horticulture more widely recognised and available to those that can benefit from it.

Trellis has more experience of running an information service for practitioners and projects, skills and knowledge sharing events, short training, fieldwork (on-site guidance & support to projects), annual conferences and an International Seminar Series.

Thrive has extensive experience of providing formal training and knowledge exchange offering an accredited Diploma and Award in STH alongside CPD and short courses for practitioners, consultancy and delivery of STH programmes from our gardens in Reading, London and Birmingham.

By combining these complementary strengths we can make faster progress towards a joint vision of a Professional Social and Therapeutic Horticulture Sector.

To ensure that our work is informed and shaped by you, the STH practitioners and managers, we are creating a consultative/discussion forum and are inviting you to be part of that.

Find out more about the Routes to Registration in STH here at  Routes to Registration – STH Register 2024.

Assocation and Register FAQs

We at Trellis are pleased to share that alongside colleagues from Thrive, the Professional Development Forum members, and with many hours of hard work from staff and volunteers, we have a draft Code of Ethics to support the work of practitioners working in therapeutic horticulture.  This code will be one of the main guiding documents for practitioners who join the accredited register, to be held by the UK Association for Social and Therapeutic Horticulture. Download the Code of Ethic here.

 Do you work in Social and Therapeutic Horticulture (STH), are you hoping to work in STH in the future? Please click here to complete the survey.

If you are interested in working with us on this exciting new venture, please register your interest by completing our short survey with your contact details and a little bit about yourself.