Professional Development

Practitioners across the sector have been calling for a professional body dedicated to STH.Trellis has been working towards this for many years and in 2021 we began running a Professional Development Forum, meeting quarterly. From our research we came up with a model for an association that could both define the role of therapeutic horticulture practitioner and start to sketch out the criteria for becoming a registered practitioner. More recently we were delighted when Thrive joined us in this work. Trellis and Thrive committed to working together to create the Professional Body for Social & Therapeutic Horticulture (STH). Practitioners felt that the professional association should be led by Trellis and Thrive as the experts in this field. The new association is called the Association for Social and Therapeutic Horticulture and will work to register STH practitioners in the UK.

Trellis and Thrive 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 almost 20 years’ experience of running a supportive network of STH projects in the UK from our Scottish base. We’ve also been running an information service for practitioners and projects, skills and knowledge sharing events, annual conferences and short training courses since 2005, more recently adding fieldwork (on-site guidance & support to projects), live demo sessions, how-to videos on our YouTube channel, a range of publications including books and factsheets and an International Seminar Series. In 2023 we launched World Therapeutic Horticulture Day.

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 their 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 have created a consultative/discussion forum and we invite you to be part of that. We have already drafted a Code of Ethics, working collaboratively with Forum members and this will be shared for further comment and consultation.

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.

Professional Association and Register FAQ

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

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.