Horticultural Therapy Services

Plants help provide healing, well-being, physical growth, and emotional strength.

What Is Horticultural Therapy?

Horticultural therapy is the use of professionally directed plant, gardening, and nature activities for the purpose of restoring the physical and mental health of its participants.

Have you noticed how a walk in the forest or being around plants makes you feel better, or how happy you are when you pick the seasons first vine-ripe tomato? How about when you share a favorite perennial with a friend or see someone admiring your garden?

There is a special connection between people and plants that increases our sense of well-being. Imagine the individuals served by your agency sharing in this feeling while engaged in plant and gardening activities as part of their therapyor just for fun.

Horticultural therapy capitalizes on the many special benefits of using plants to help people grow.

Horticultural therapy maintains or improves physical health by providing unlimited opportunities for exercising, increasing flexibility, improving coordination and balance, and building physical strength. Multiple studies have demonstrated that physiological indicators such as respiration, pulse, and blood pressure respond positively to plants.

Horticultural therapy elicits positive psychological and emotional responses as well by relieving stress, providing a nonthreatening atmosphere, alleviating depression, and helping people connect with nature. Research studies confirm these and many other psychosocial benefits when people interact with plants and nature.

www.chicagobotanic.org/therapy

The Buehler Enabling Garden

The Buehler Enabling Garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden is a world-class model promoting garden design, tools, equipment, and techniques that engage people of all abilities in gardening. Since its beginning, the Gardens Horticultural Therapy Services has contracted with more than 200 health and human service agencies. These include the following:

Allendale Association Blair Early Childhood Development Center Chicago Association of Retarded Citizens Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind Childrens Memorial Hospital El Valor Englewood Hospital Hines and Jesse Brown VA Hospitals HUD Senior Housing Illinois Childrens School Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital Mather LifeWays Northshore University Health System Northwestern Memorial Hospital Presbyterian Homes Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital
The Garden is a not-for-profit public garden located 25 miles north of Chicago in Glencoe, Illinois. A variety of display gardens, as well as education and research programs, are featured on the 385-acre site. Since its inception in 1972, the Garden has grown in prominence and expertise in community education, youth and family programs, adult education, and professional credentialing. Moreover, the Garden is known worldwide for its research, training, and leading-edge solutions in plant conservation science. The Garden partners with Northwestern University in offering a masters and doctoral program in plant conservation science. The expertise gained by Garden horticultural therapists serving such diverse audiences makes the contract services program uniquely qualified to establish programming at your agency.

www.chicagobotanic.org/therapy

The Gardens Horticultural Therapy Services Program

Since 1977, the Gardens Horticultural Therapy Services Program has supported the establishment of horticultural therapy programs at healthcare and human service agencies serving schools, VA hospitals, and people with disabilities and older adults in the Chicago region. The program serves as a primary regional, national, and international resource for information while offering a full range of professional training opportunities. Also available are consulting services in barrier-free greenhouse and enabling garden design, sensory landscaping, and horticultural therapy program planning.

Now that the Chicago Botanic Garden has shown me how to lead gardening activities, I can do it on my own with the residents.
Janet Winograd, Activity Coordinator, Village at Victory Lakes

www.chicagobotanic.org/therapy

Horticultural Therapy Services

Horticultural Therapy Contract Services

Horticultural Therapy Contract Services, with 30 years of programming experience, is uniquely prepared to train your staff to sustain a program, or Garden staff can assume total program responsibility as an outsource service. This program uses the general popularity of plants and gardening to engage participants in meaningful activity. Once individuals are involved, the therapeutic benefits of working with plants to restore physical and mental health quickly become evident. Horticultural Therapy Contract Services supplies all materials necessary for weekly activity sessions that are therapeutically grounded and adaptable to a wide range of functional and cognitive abilities. Session leadership generally rotates on alternate weeks between Garden staff, horticultural therapists/volunteers, and your agency staff/volunteers. Activities, which may vary as new ideas are tested and incorporated into the program, may include the following:

Contract Options

The Chicago Botanic Garden offers the following 45-minute session options to a maximum of 15 participants. All materials are included.
OPTION I Outdoor Gardening Program

20 weeks (20 sessions, 10 staffed by the Garden) Approximately May 15 September 25 Contract must be signed by March 1 ctivities with program participants begin with A outdoor garden planting approximately May 15 ost covers consumable materials (soil, pots, plants, etc.) C for 15 participants per session, and outdoor garden installation (labor and materials)

Vegetable, Herb, and Flower Gardening Indoor Plant Maintenance and Care Fresh or Dried Flower Arranging Creating Holiday Decorations Herbal Crafts Forcing Flowering Bulbs

OPTION II Indoor Gardening Program

all and winter program blocks of 20 weeks F (20 sessions, 10 staffed by the Garden) pproximately October 20 December 19, A then continuing January 10 April 15 Contract must be signed by September 15 ost covers consumable materials (soil, pots, plants, etc.) C and craft supplies for 15 participants per session, plus indoor plant light cart and equipment

Register today.
For more information about this program and to register, visit www.chicagobotanic.org/therapy or call (847) 835-8250.

OPTION III Year-Round Gardening Program (Outdoor and Indoor)

Combines Options I and II above 40 sessions (40 sessions, 20 staffed by the Garden) ontract must be signed by March 1 C (begins in May) or September 15 (begins in October) ost covers consumable materials (soil, pots, plants, etc.) C and craft supplies for 15 participants per session, indoor plant light cart and equipment, and outdoor garden installation

10

www.chicagobotanic.org/therapy

www.chicagobotanic.org/therapy

11

Horticultural Therapy Services

Gardening for Life Enrichment Yearlong Program

Activities to Cultivate Health and Well-Being

The Garden offers a therapeutically grounded series of engaging plant and natural craft activities, one activity offered per month throughout the year. Primarily presented on your site with the Garden supplying all necessary tools, during the summer months you may bring your group to the specially designed, award-winning Buehler Enabling Garden. Gardening for Life Enrichment features the most popular of our therapeutic programs, tested by the Garden throughout the last two decades and drawing on extensive experience working with special-needs populations in a variety of settings.

Register today.
For more information about this program and to register, visit www.chicagobotanic.org/therapy or call (847) 835-8250.

Who is responsible for bringing you to us? I want to thank them for this wonderful new program.
Resident of Mather Place at the Georgian

www.chicagobotanic.org/therapy

13

Horticultural Therapy Services

Gardening for Life Enrichment Daily Program
Where People of all Abilities Find Inspiration in Nature

Whatever their needs, visitors to the award-winning Buehler Enabling Garden will be comfortable amid this inspiring, beautiful setting for life enrichment activities and programs. Led by horticultural therapists, 45- to 60-minute sessions include plant propagation, herb harvesting, fresh or dried flower arranging, and much more. Therapists draw from the Buehler Enabling Gardens stunning colors, textures, sights, sounds, and smells as they assist visitors of all abilities. Accommodations in this safe, comfortable, barrier-free venue include bathrooms and nearby drinking fountains. The Gardens horticultural therapy staff has designed a variety of fun, enjoyable activities that encourage socialization and support therapeutic objectives through its Scents and Senses activities, which include the following: Plant Propagation Herb Harvesting Fresh or Dried Flower Arranging Birdseed Making Sensory Tour

Preregistration is required; includes up to 15 participants, plus any staff required by group, and all materials. Programs are outdoors, mid-May through mid-October. Some activities are weather- and season-dependent.

Register today.
For more information about this program and to register, visit www.chicagobotanic.org/therapy or call (847) 835-8250.

Horticultural Therapy Services are generously supported by an endowment created by the Buehler Family Foundation and a grant from the Grant Healthcare Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Albers/Kuhn Family Foundation, Blowitz-Ridgeway Foundation, the Edmond and Alice Opler Foundation, as well as endowments created by the Julien H. and Bertha M. Collins Fund, Kenilworth Garden Club, and the Estate of Florentz Rantz.

www.chicagobotanic.org/therapy

15

Horticultural Therapy Services

Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Northbrook, IL Permit No. 1568

One of the treasures of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County

The award-winning Buehler Enabling Garden is made possible by the generous support of the Buehler Family Foundation.

Register today.
For more information about this program and to register, visit www.chicagobotanic.org/therapy or call (847) 835-8250.