What is Therapeutic Horticulture?
How do we define Therapeutic Horticulture?
Therapeutic Horticulture (TH or sometimes prefixed with ‘Social and …’ or STH) is a practice whereby trained practitioners, using plants, gardening and nature connection, support people to help them improve their physical and psychological health and wellbeing, communication and social skills and abilities.
Therapeutic horticulture is a unique professional field with its own specialist skills & knowledge base, incorporating, crucially, health/care skills, horticulture and therapeutic horticulture skills as well as adaptive horticulture (garden skills/methods/design and tools adapted to suit health & support needs). Therapeutic horticulture can be visualised as occupying a niche where the horticulture and the health and care professions intersect and blend.
Therapeutic Horticulture (TH) is defined by the American Horticultural Therapy Association as “the participation in horticultural activities facilitated by a registered horticultural therapist or other professionals with training in the use of horticulture as a therapeutic modality to support program goals. Therapeutic horticulture is the process through which participants enhance their well-being through active or passive involvement in plant and plant-related activities” (AHTA, 2024). This modality is delivered to individuals and groups, with the intention of improving health outcomes.
Therapeutic Horticulture Practitioner – how is this role defined?
An STH practitioner is a trained professional who engages with people using plants, activities centred on horticulture and nature connection to enable people to improve their physical health, mental health and wellbeing. Practitioners seek to bring about a tangible or experiential benefit for each client in response to their defined need(s) and goal(s), taking a holistic and person-centred approach.
Practitioners bring about benefits through three key processes, facilitating time:
- in nature,
- in meaningful activity, and
- in a positive social environment.
In this area of crossover, both domains adapt to accommodate the needs and demands of the other profession. Since practitioners mostly focus on helping people with defined or diagnosed health and support needs, applying conventional horticultural techniques without adaptation to these needs may often be inappropriate. One example of this is traditional horticultural soil cultivation techniques like digging might be swapped for less physically demanding methods in a spinal injury centre - or abandoned entirely in favour of ‘no dig’ or even soil-free methods. While our diagram shows therapeutic horticulture practice dwelling in the dark green area where 2 larger professions intersect, it’s a professional discipline in its own right.
Therapeutic horticulture can be used for
- recovery/healing,
- rehabilitation and
- prevention.
Adherence rates are high and side effects and overdose risks are low or non-existent. However, practitioners need specialist knowledge and training to provide maximum benefit.
Evidence-based: Therapeutic horticulture is an evidence-based practice which means there are sound and growing scientific research data to show that it can have therapeutic effects on human health and wellbeing and that any risks or harms are low or negligible.
Training and knowledge base: Therapeutic horticulture practitioners need the right skills and knowledge to provide a safe and high-quality service to their clients. The knowledge base on which our profession is built includes practitioner training courses around the world, shorter, introductory and post-qualification and specialist courses and a mounting evidence base. To read more about this, visit our Learning and Research pages.
How to ensure maximum benefit? Without the help of a trained practitioner, the benefits of gardening and nature connection may not be accessible to everyone and can be particularly inaccessible to people with defined health or support needs, such as dementia, a mental health diagnosis, reduced mobility or learning disabilities. Yet often people with these needs are the ones who can gain most from gardening and connecting with nature. Some of the barriers to enjoying gardening’s health benefits include inaccessible garden layouts full of barriers (visible or otherwise), lack of initial support to attend a service, and support workers/practitioners without adequate training.
Making sure the benefits of gardens and gardening activities are available to everyone requires practitioners with expertise in therapeutic and traditional horticulture, accessible and adaptive garden design, programming, and health and care skills to tailor services to peoples’ needs
Many health professionals swear to abide by the Hippocratic oath, ‘first do no harm’ and pharmacists often sign up to follow the oath of Maimonides which includes, ‘May I never see in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain. Grant me the strength, … always to correct what I have acquired, …for knowledge is immense.’ The training of health practitioners starts from this principle and aims high, to provide as much benefit as possible to the people they care for.
By working to develop practitioner training courses to equip people working in this field with the skills they need to provide a high-quality service to people participating in TH projects, we hope to provide optimum public benefit. We are developing a Professional Association in conjunction with Thrive, and a programme of continuing professional development (CPD) to enable practitioners to keep their skills up to date.
To Our Good Health
- Diet is now perhaps the biggest cause of ill-health in Scotland; physical inactivity close behind.
- The health conditions that cause most health burden (Disability Adjusted Life Years and demand on health services) are: Ischaemic (Coronary) Heart Disease, Neck and lower back pain, Depression, COPD, Lung cancer and Stroke.
- Many of these share common risk factors: sedentary lifestyles, diet, smoking, alcohol and drug use and environment.
- Gardening can help address all of these, at least in part.
The Benefits of Therapeutic Horticulture
Therapeutic horticulture offers a whole range of powerful and lasting benefits to our health and wellbeing. It’s an evidence-based practice that’s very cost-effective and carries very few or no side effects or downsides.
Therapeutic Horticulture Knowledge Base
Therapeutic horticulture is a unique profession and practice that overlaps to some extent with the health/care and horticulture professional domains.
Theory of Change
Therapeutic horticulture employs gardening, plants and nature connection to offer a host of benefits including better mood, reduced depression symptoms, pain, anxiety and stress, and increased physical fitness, life satisfaction and reduced loneliness as documented in a growing evidence base.
International Contacts
Take a look at all of our international contacts.
Adaptive Gardening™
Adaptive Gardening™ is the practice of making gardening accessible for everyone, finding ways to overcome physical, psychological and social barriers to taking part in gardening activities.
Membership
Membership provides at least £240 worth of savings – and a wealth of support on your therapeutic gardening journey.
Membership is suitable for students, individuals and project organisations learning or practising therapeutic gardening in their workplace, community or therapeutic gardening setting.