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. It can be used for:
- recovery/healing,
- rehabilitation and
- prevention
There are many different ways to measure improvements, but depression or anxiety scales, life satisfaction and loneliness surveys, general health and wellbeing scales and pain ratings as well as diaries and informal feedback comments are commonly used alongside other indices such as blood pressure, sleep trackers and medication levels.
How long does it take to feel a benefit? People often find these health and wellbeing benefits begin in the first session at a therapeutic gardening project, but optimum improvements often take 10-12 weeks.
Adherence: people attend therapeutic horticulture programmes very consistently. This high adherence rate compares with low levels in other treatment regimes, so offering an effective and efficient, cost-effective route to recovery and preventative benefits.
Side effects and overdose: there are no known side effect or overdose risks related to therapeutic horticulture.
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.
Our work with therapeutic horticulture practitioners, and directly with beneficiaries, helps provide skills, training, expert knowledge, confidence, and new ideas to ensure people get the most out of their participation. This in turn ensures that people most in need can benefit from excellent therapeutic garden services and all that time in nature has to offer. We’re also working with practitioners across the UK to develop quality standards for practice in the field so that whoever you are, and whatever your need, you can be assured of excellent care and service when you attend a therapeutic horticulture programme. Read more about this work on our Professional Development pages.
Professional Development
Trellis began running a Professional Development Forum in 2021. We've now joined forces with Thrive to create the Association for Social and Therapeutic Horticulture, a professional body to register STH practitioners in the UK.