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Horticultural Therapy
Horticultural Therapy Thomas OgrenThe idea of using gardens and plants as “tools” for therapy isgrowing fast these days. Makes perfect sense, too. There is agreat deal of evidence that working in gardens is wonderful forour mental health. The relation between our mental health andour physical health is a close one. If we feel good aboutourselves, about our families, our work, our friends, often ourbodies will feel stronger too. Just being in a beautiful gardencan make many of us feel better. Doing small chores in thegarden, deadheading roses, pulling weeds, planting some bulbs,fertilizing, all of these things have the ability to make usfeel good. In the Persian language the words “garden” and“heaven” are one and the same. In our own lives so often wespend most of our time rushing here and rushing there. We spendway too much time stuck in front of computers, TV sets, stuck inrush hour traffic, doing things that may be necessary, butthings that aren’t much fun, much less satisfying. But workingin the garden, that’s different, especially for those of us whoreally do love to garden. I recently came on some research datathat suggests that the more tuned into gardening a person is,the more nurturing, creative, and compassionate that person willbe. Again, this makes sense too. In the garden we are free toexperiment. In the garden what we do actually does make adifference, a huge difference. Unlike so many things, the moreeffort we put into our gardens, the better they are. What is thelink between gardening and empathy for our fellow man? Could itbe that gardening brings us closer to nature? That by getting intouch with Mother Nature, we are ourselves enriched? Probablyso. But then too, there’s no doubt that the type of people drawnto gardening in the first place, may already have in them anextra dose of creativity and compassion. I used to work in aprison for juveniles. The CYA it was called, the CaliforniaYouth Authority. I started from scratch the program there andover the years the program grew, the gardens expanded, I learnednew things and so did my wayward students. Most of my “boys” inthe CYA were gang members from the Los Angeles area. Typicallythey were “in” for armed robbery, muggings, murder. Most ofthem, although they ranged in age from fifteen to twenty-five,most could barely read, and none had done any gardening. Idesigned our gardens to be therapeutic. We built a big brickbarbecue so we could cook things we grew. We grew fruit trees,hundreds of them, so we’d have fresh fruit to eat. We put upbird feeders so w...
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...e could attract and see birds in the garden. Weput up birdbaths, we made wind chimes, and we planted hugegardens of vegetables and flowers. In our gardens we grew thingsorganically. I taught them to value frogs, toads, lizards,snakes as welcome additions to the garden. We made huge piles ofcompost. About the only form of punishment we used was, “turningthe compost heap.” We always had a radio to play some music tolisten to while we worked. Deep, profound changes happened tomany of these hardened criminals while working in the garden. Asthey learned to hybridize roses they lost their desire to robliquor stores. As they grew tomatoes big as your fist andwatermelons big as beach balls, they became proud of theiraccomplishments. The more they learned about plants, the lessthey were interested in crime. Many of these boys learned how toread, to do math, to write, and learned it all there in thegardens, in the greenhouses. I worked in the CYA for twelveyears. People in authority sometimes claimed that I bribed my“wards” and that I must be doing something illegal. Theycouldn’t understand how it was that these hoodlums could learnthe scientific names of hundreds of plants, that they actuallylearned to love to read, to love to garden. But I didn’t bribethe boys; I just set up a garden with a healing atmosphere andthen let it work its wonders. The right garden is a magicalplace. Plants are not judgmental. You take good care of them andthey thrive. In the garden our minds are free to wander, todaydream, to relax. Good things happen in good gardens. Why talkabout horticultural therapy in a book devoted largely to allergyavoidance? The answer is simple. Gardening of itself can be verytherapeutic, however, if the garden is filled with plants thatcause allergies, well, the gardening experience won’t be thatgood. It is no fun to be sneezing and even less fun to haveattacks of skin rashes or asthma. By making our gardensallergy-free we can avoid these negatives. The physical workdone in gardens is also good for us, burning calories, makingour muscles stronger. In the right garden the air is cleaner,too, refreshing our lungs as we work. If it makes sense to havea therapeutic garden be allergy-free, it also makes sense thatgardening is food for the soul, and the happier we feel aboutlife, quite often, the better will be our health.The Fen Shui Garden. The more people you talk to about Fen Shuiand gardening, the more opinions on it you get. Ms. Robin Wood,a very talented landscape architect once told me, “Fen Shuigardening is really ju...
...st good landscape design.” And to a point,I would agree with her. In many ways the ancient Chinesephilosophy of Fen Shui, also called Feng Shui, is all aboutcreating harmony. In a true Fen Shui garden the focus is on theatmosphere. A garden is created that encourages meditation,relaxation, close connections to Nature. A good Fen Shui gardendoes not ignore any of our senses. There are fragrant flowers tosmell, wind chimes, the sounds of water, and the songs of birdsto please our ears, shade from the hot sun, protection from thewind, places just to sit and think, contrasting surfaces tofeel, beauty to please our eye, and perhaps even some fruit orvegetable for our tongue to taste. A true Fen Shui garden is notstrictly formal, overly clipped, too tidy and sanitary, alldrawn with squares and rectangles. Shrubs don’t need to besquare nor do all trees need to resemble each other. A quietrestrained informality is encouraged. Love, peace,understanding, and wisdom reign in a true Fen Shui garden. Inmany ways during all my years at the Youth Authority, although Ididn’t know it at the time, I was instinctively trying todevelop a Fen Shui garden. Surrounded by guards, gangs, andconcertina razor wire, I aspired to create an inner sanctum, anatural place for me and my students to remove ourselves fromall the bad vibes so very close by. I am not a Fen Shui expertby any means and certainly do not claim to be, but I have read agreat deal about it, listened to numerous talks given byso-called experts, and I have long been interested and involvedin garden design. I think that Fen Shui does indeed have much tooffer and that it is well worth exploring. However, I oftennotice a certain snobbishness surrounding the subject. Oneexpert writes that none of the others know what they’re talkingabout, especially the Western writers and speakers. I’ve metsome Fen Shui designers and writers who were cold, impersonaland rude, none of which jives with true Fen Shui in my mind. Isometimes encounter a similar snobbishness with people whorefuse to grow any plants not native to their own little localarea. My feeling about all these snobby attitudes in gardeningis this: Elitism doesn’t belong in the garden. Plants aren’tcritical, let’s not be that way ourselves. Many people, farwiser than I, have long known that the more we learn aboutsomething, the more we realize how little we know. Harold Young,the wonderful senior editor of Pacific Coast Nurseryman Magazineonce wrote me in an email, “I used to think I knew a lot ofplants.” I know just what he means.
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