Horticultural practices add greatly to our quality of life.  A relatively unknown aspect of horticulture is its therapeutic uses, which can be specifically beneficial in institutional settings.  Horticultural therapy is benefits people in many ways—it can help lower blood pressure, decrease the need for certain medications, help maintain muscle tone, elevate mood, and more.

Kenton County Extension Horticulture, aided by Master Gardener volunteers, provides monthly therapeutic horticultural activities to residents of a long-term care facility.  Our visits are additionally appreciated by these residents because while most of them grew up on farms, they are now living indoors, in a city, with few opportunities to go outside.  Besides the other benefits of horticultural therapy, our sessions bring the outdoors in. 

On Tuesday mornings, 4-6 of us go to the home for an hour-long visit they call the ‘Garden Club’. We have pressed flowers; made clay prints with leaves; grown bulbs, herbs, and flowers in a mobile greenhouse; forced branches into winter flowering; decorated pumpkins; adorned picture frames with acorn caps, and more.  Each activity reflects the season, and involves use of plant materials.  Each session is followed by a horticulture-themed bingo game. There’s one flowers, another with vegetables, insects, or garden tools, etc., and we talk about each image as we play.

Through these activities, we encourage well-being; we reinforce long-term and short-term memory, encourage engagement and conversation, require the use of small motor skills, stimulate the senses, give residents a sense of accomplishment through completion of a craft, and give them something monthly to anticipate. 

Our outcomes are qualitative. Each month, participants create something new, use the activity to recall experiences from their youth, learn new things about plants, use their hands, communicate with us and each other, laugh, and smile.

One measurable longer-range outcome is participation. Although we do not track individuals, we find most residents become ‘regulars’ once they start.  Participation was about 10-12 per month in 2015; now it averages 14-16—we have had to add seating. The staff reports that residents look forward to Garden Club all month. When we come to set up, many are already there, waiting for our arrival. The home used to have a simultaneous activity, but residents requested that it be moved so they could attend Garden club instead. Other outcomes are subtle: this fall, one of the oldest residents (she is around 100) spoke for the first time I could recall.  The facility has built another location, and requested that we conduct activities there, too.  All in all, we call this a success.