Grow Well Wardell
If we can create environments for plants
we can create them for our own recovery
Project Vision
Grow Well Wardell includes horticultural activities for trauma recovery, social enterprise, community resilience and ecosystem restoration.
Our focus is on creating outcomes that provide a rich landscape for personal development and sustainability initiatives through facilitated community engagement and a culture of care.
We seek to provide holistic health and wellbeing initiatives through nature-based education, application and independence.
Introduction
Therapeutic Horticulture is the purposeful use of plants in treatment plans to improve mental health [1]. While we know that we could not survive without food and oxygen supplied by plants, research also indicates that plants are connected with our physical, mental, social, and emotional wellness [2,3].
Gardening presents the perfect way for people in trauma recovery to develop new skills and abilities, to focus and to meditate. When participants witness a garden they have nurtured and developed from an empty plot of soil to a flourishing ecosystem, they develop feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction.
A change in routine, as available in gardening, gives participants new engagements that require energy and attention, giving them space with their trauma to heal. There are also striking similarities in the way patients carefully and slowly nurture life in a garden and the careful and slow path leading to recovery. [4]
Evidence suggests that the key role of horticultural therapy in trauma recovery is that it provides participants with an avenue to rebuild their confidence and give them a sense of purpose. [5]
PTSD sufferers often experience anxiety, as well as intrusive memories of their traumas and triggering reminders of those experiences. The therapeutic use of horticulture can provide a calming ground for healing while also providing a safe space that is tangible and tactile where the past powerful events can be differentiated from the present. [6,7]
Programs supported by :
1. American Horticultural Therapy Association (AHTA). (2009). Horticultural therapy www.ahta.org
2. Acquaah, G. (2004). Horticulture: Principles and practices. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall
3. Haller, R. L., & Kramer, C. L. (2006). Horticultural therapy methods: Making connections in health care, human service, and community programs. Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Press, Inc
4. Gerlach-Spriggs, N., Kaufman, R.E. & Warner, S.B. (1998). Restorative gardens: The healing landscape. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
5. Horticultural therapy, nutrition and post-traumatic stress disorder in post-military veterans (2021) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8456374/
6.Lorber, H.Z. (2001). Powerful events. www.allbluescounseling.com/writings/powerful_events
7.The Use of Horticulture in the Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in a Private Practice Setting (2011) https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24863533.pdf