Gardening as Therapy - I

Last weekend I attended a Garden Writers of America regional meeting at NYU Medical Center’s Enid Haupt Glass Garden at the Rusk Institute for Rehabilitation. Director Nancy Chambers (top photo) presented the keynote on the hospital’s horticultural therapy program.

The Glass Garden (greenhouse) offers year-round programs for the hospital’s patients as well as the general public. The horticultural therapy classes are designed to be restorative and support the work of the hospital’s physical or occupational therapy programs. Established in 1959, the 1,700 square foot conservatory is a tropical oasis with plant collections that include an aquatic garden, orchids, ferns, palms, bromeliads, succulents, caudate, and insectivorous plants. A true botanic garden, it includes plants from around the world to provide international visitors with a glimpse of “home.” Koi, goldfish, turtles, and catfish inhabit the pond; parrots, finches, canaries, and doves impart soothing sounds. A tuxedo cat greets visitors and suns herself among the plants.

The Glass Garden and Rusk’s recognition of the healing effect natural environments have on hospital patients were ahead of their time. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that horticultural therapy became a recognized profession due, in part, to the research of environmental psychologists Stephen and Rachel Kaplan.

Patients participate in gardening activities both to practice what they’ve learned in occupational therapy, and to get away from the hospital environment. But the majority of the more than 100,000 people who visit the Glass Garden each year are relatives or friends of patients, who may have to spend long hours just waiting. Hospital staff also find relief from job stress by taking a quick break there.

Many thanks to Nancy for hosting this event.
More next time…..

To read about the Enid Haupt Glass Garden and the horticultural therapy program, or for directions to the garden, visit http://www.med.nyu.edu/glassgardens   

To read my thoughts on the Transformational Power of Gardening, click http://loisdevries.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Transformational%20Power%20of%20Gardening

To read about creating a holistic relationship with your garden, visit  http://cultivatingtheinnergardener.blogspot.com 

Popular posts from this blog

Detention Basins: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Image
In our area, stormwater sewers that serve housing developments and some businesses empty into the dreaded detention (or retention, or infiltration) basin, a visually hideous engineered method of holding large volumes of water until it can safely disperse to groundwater, natural streams, ponds, etc. (top photo). These are generally grass monocultures or rip rap which, if not properly maintained become weedy, overgrown maintenance nightmares. Suffice it to say that anyone who can get away with not maintaining one will continue to not maintain it. Frequently, the town ends up owning and maintaining such basins, meaning that all the taxpayers pay. When grass is used as the only groundcover and pesticides and fertilizers are applied, they can contaminate the runoff. Regular mowing of the basins is difficult because of the steep sides and wet floor. This maintenance adds contaminants to the watercourse, as well. Grass basins also attract undesirable wildlife, such as Canada Geese, which
Keep reading

Please Garden Responsibly. Because What You Spray in Your Garden Doesn’t Stay in Your Garden

Image
American Lady caterpillar on licorice plant. Photo: Courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden Scores of their silky tents covered the licorice plant in the container on my porch. Inside the tents, something was gobbling up the leaves faster than I could pick them off. The plant must have been infested when I bought it. As I reached for my organic insecticide, I thought, “Wait, you don’t know what kind of caterpillars these are!” I recalled an article on pest management by a friend who cautioned: “Sometimes, the best treatment is no treatment at all.” It took the better part of the afternoon for me to identify the miniature mowing machines. In the meantime, half of them had started dropping from their perches and wriggling off into the underbrush. I hoped I had made the right decision. The licorice plant was devastated. But then I noticed that the caterpillars had not eaten the leaves all the way down to the stem. Possibly, secondary buds could sprout and still provide a silvery
Keep reading

Musings on the Relativity of Time and The Arithmetic of Overpopulation

Image
I celebrated my birthday recently. Beyond a certain age, birthdays become a double-edged sword. You’re glad you made it to the next one, but realize that there are far fewer years ahead of you than behind you. The list of absent friends grows ever longer. Colleagues grow grey; everyone else looks like they just graduated from middle school. I used to console myself by calculating that I still had at least 2 5 more years to go, which made the end point seem very far off. But, now that would mean I’d live to an unrealistically old age, a concept supported by neither family history nor actuarial tables. I’m reminded of Einstein’s summary of his Theory of Relativity: "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour." I guess I’ve been having too much fun. But that can’t go on forever. My immortality would not be good for the planet. It’s not sustainable. At the same time that medical advances have
Keep reading