Planting Hope

Planting Hope

Therapeutic Gardening and Emotional Health

Recorded Saturday 6 November 2021

With Ozichi Brewster, Mike Morgan, Sue Stuart-Smith and Dr Maggie Turp

CPD Credits: 4.5 hours

Saturday 6 November 2021 has been declared a Global Day of Action for Climate Justice in which communities all around the world will come together to build power for systems change; at COP26 the theme for this date is ‘Nature: Ensuring the importance of nature and sustainable land use are part of global action on climate change and a clean, green recovery.’ Planting Hope is Confer’s contribution to this day of action, and we are inviting psychotherapists and others to join us in thinking about food, soil, land equity, and the balance of our relationship with the earth in the wider context of the environmental crisis.

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FULL PROGRAMME

Mike Morgan
Solid Ground: Principles, Rationale and Evidence Underpinning the Use of Social and Therapeutic Horticulture for Mental Wellbeing
This introduction to the use of Social and Therapeutic Horticulture (STH) will outline the history and theoretical foundations of using gardens and gardening for the promotion and remediation of mental wellbeing. Mike will explain the key principles of contemporary STH and how these develop a rationale for practice. He will critique current research and the policy context, and finally suggest strategies for optimising STH service development.

Q&A

Dr Maggie Turp
Therapeutic Perspectives on a Community Horticulture Initiative

In this presentation, Maggie will tell the story of a community-based gardening project in London. From small beginnings, the project has grown to become a community of 25 adults and their children, including asylum seekers alongside established local residents. Although not explicitly therapeutic in intent, the project provides a vector for examining the mental health benefits of growing food, herbs and flowers, and in particular of growing plants with others. The project has evoked for Maggie such ideas as ‘continuity of being’, ‘vitality contours’, ‘mutuality’, ‘land, food and home’, ‘biophilia’, ‘agency’ and ‘transformation’.

Q&A

Ozichi Brewster
The Magic of Growing Plants: Social Prescribing at RHS Garden Bridgewater

RHS Garden Bridgewater is pioneering a social prescribing project to support the local community’s wellbeing. People have been referred to the garden through ‘social prescribing’ by their doctors and our wellbeing programme is looking at ways therapeutic gardening, gardens and green spaces can transform people’s lives. Plants need care and by tending to them in a community we see life develop on many levels. That’s usually quite magical for people.

Q&A

Sue Stuart-Smith
The Well-Gardened Mind

The garden has always been a place of peace and perseverance, of nature and reward. From the science of the brain’s own ‘gardener cells’, to the beauty of flowers and the grounding effects of working with nature’s rhythms of growth, decay and regeneration, Stuart-Smith provides a new perspective on the power of gardening. Using case studies of people struggling with stress, depression, trauma and addiction, as well as her own grandfather’s return from World War I, she explores the many ways in which gardening can help transform people’s lives.

Q&A

Q&A with all speakers

FEES

Includes: 1 year’s access, test and CPD Certificate of Attendance, subtitles and transcript

INDIVIDUAL

£60 (or £48 Confer member)

GROUP RATE

£50pp in groups of over 10 (please apply to accounts@confer.uk.com)

CPD

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 4.5 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate. You can submit this test up to a maximum of 5 times.

SCHEDULE

00:04:26
Mike Morgan

00:33:00
Q&A with Mike Morgan

01:03:14
Dr Maggie Turp

01:47:30
Q&A with Dr Maggie Turp

01:59:57
Ozichi Brewster

02:47:07
Q&A with Ozichi Brewster

03:00:05
Sue Stuart-Smith

03:48:39
Q&A with Sue Stuart-Smith

03:58:14
Q&A with all panel

04:28:25
End.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By attending this workshop virtually, participants will be able to:
Discuss how gardening develops both a sense of agency and transformation and can develop community and mutuality.
Outline the history and theoretical foundations of using gardens and gardening for the promotion and remediation of mental wellbeing.
Examine the mental health benefits of growing food, herbs and flowers.
Link understandings in neuroscience with therapeutic gardening.