Gardening therapy: PAST AND PRESENT

Annabelle Padwick offers some insight in to the history of gardening therapy and emphasises how engaging with nature can be a positive force in everyone’s lives

- Annabelle Padwick

I’m not sure about you, but a few years ago I used to think growing your own food as a source of therapy was a new thing, or atleast it was something we did which helps us but that wasn’t ‘officially’ recognised by medical practitioners as a viable prescribed option for all. It’s only in the last couple of years horticultural therapy has really started being talked about as a credible option to offer everyone for free as soon as they walk through the GP’s door.

Yet, horticultural therapy charity Thrive, for example, has been changing lives since 1979! I do wonder why it has taken so long. Perhaps this is because it hasn’t been supported fully or evidenced with numbers enough over the years, so it is not taken as seriously compared with the years of trials and studies carried out with more conventional solutions.

In fact, there is no ‘perhaps’ about it. Last year I attended a healthcare conference alongside senior members of the NHS, GPs, psychologists and link workers. I regularly noticed the conversations coming back to required investments and number reporting evidence for alternative therapies such as gardening to become credible. For me, while I understood the reasons why and the need for proof, I had to share that I felt like this need dehumanised individuals’ different personalities, emotional and physical basic needs.