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Feature
Horticulture at Work in the UT Gardens
An update on the latest news and programs in Horticultural Therapy at UT
By Dr. Derrick Stowell, CTRS, HTR Education and Horticultural Therapy Program Administrator, UT Gardens, Department of Plant Sciences
The University of Tennessee (UT) Gardens offers horticultural therapy programming to a wide variety of individuals and organizations throughout Tennessee. These programs have been designed to connect the mission of the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture (UTIA) through education, research, and outreach. Since 2012, the UT Gardens horticultural therapy program has served over 9,000 individuals with a variety of medical conditions, as well as service, outreach, and programming to 2,610 health care professionals from around Tennessee. As importantly, across more than 10 years the horticultural therapy program has also served 41 interns who have benefitted from horticultural therapy-focused internship opportunities. These interns, along with graduate students, staff, and faculty advisors to the horticultural therapy program have conducted and published research on horticultural therapy. Most recently, a successful horticultural therapy certificate program has been launched. This article focuses on two elements that connect our horticultural therapy program to the broad mission of the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture (UTIA); 1.) the creation of the University of Tennessee’s first undergraduate certificate program and, 2.) a collaboration with the Tennessee AgrAbility Project.
The Horticultural Therapy Certificate program
The University of Tennessee Horticultural Therapy Certificate program was launched in 2022 with its first cohort. This certificate program consists of nine hours of college credit in horticultural therapy, PLSC 411 – Introduction to Horticultural Therapy (three hours), PLSC 412 – Horticultural Therapy Programming and Techniques (three hours), and PLSC 413 – Horticultural Therapy Program Management. These courses have been accredited by the American Horticultural Therapy Association. This program was developed as an online certificate program to increase accessibility to students from around the country to high quality horticultural therapy education and training. The program is an accelerated program and can be completed in 21 weeks. The final week of PLSC 413 is an in-person session held at the UTIA campus in Knoxville, Tennessee. The third cohort will launch in fall 2023 and be completed by Spring of 2024. Students in this certificate program come from a variety of professional backgrounds including, but not limited to recreational therapy, occupational therapy, and counseling. Other students who attend the program are interested in starting a new career using horticultural therapy as a treatment modality. There has been increasing interest in plants and using horticulture to help improve health and well-being and the Horticultural Therapy Certificate prepares students to develop their own horticultural therapy programming. The assignments undertaken during the program focus on the horticultural therapy basics and then build upon those basic components. Students who complete the program have an opportunity and the capability to develop their own horticultural therapy program plans that can be used at their place of work, or that can assist them to obtain new employment using horticulture as therapy.
The Tennessee AgrAbility Project: A Collaborative Horticultural Therapy Workshop for Veterans
Another active endeavor at the UT Garden includes horticultural therapy workshops for veterans. The UT Gardens has been collaborating with Tennessee AgrAbility Project since 2017. This collaboration created and implemented horticultural therapy workshops for veterans. The first workshops were developed to educate veterans on the therapeutic benefits of horticulture and to connect project participants to resources that the Tennessee AgrAbility Project offers. Veteran participants can benefit from farm assessments and the Tennessee New Farmer Academy. Outcomes from first round of workshops, which were supported by a National Institutes of Food and Agriculture grant, included positive connections made with other veterans, learning about career opportunities for veterans, and learning about the positive health benefits of cultivating plants (Stowell & Burnett, 2019). The second round of workshops included virtual workshops and training as well as in-person programming. In this second round, the UT Gardens and Tennessee AgrAbility Project partnered with a third organization, called FrontLine Gardens, to connect with veterans. FrontLine Gardens is a non-profit organization that provides raised bed gardens to veterans and connects them to the therapeutic benefits of horticulture. The mission of FrontLine Gardens is “to assist in the journey to healing veterans, first responders, and gold star families with PTSD physically, emotionally, and spiritually through therapeutic gardening.” The work of AgrAbility and UT Gardens has helped ensure that FrontLine gardens has received valuable tools to help with their organization’s overall success. Stephanie Trost, executive director of FrontLine Gardens, shared that:
“[At] the University of Tennessee, Derrick Stowell has been with us every step of the way. They helped us understand the complexity and the benefits of Horticultural Therapy. As we launched, they have stayed by our side offering our new gardener’s classes to help them succeed. We would not be where we are today, if it was not for UT and their support.”
The final piece of the AgrAbility collaboration is a training program designed for Master Gardeners. To accomplish this, the UT Gardens provided training on the therapeutic benefits of horticulture to Master Gardens and then connected Master Gardeners to veterans who have had a garden built by FrontLine Gardens. The project also included workshops for veterans that not only connected veterans to the therapeutic benefits of gardens, but it also connected them to additional resources that FrontLine Gardens can offer. Since the beginning of horticultural therapy programming for this project, seven workshops have been held across Tennessee including in Knoxville, Nashville, Clarksville, Memphis, and one online workshop.
If you work with veterans and are interested in having UT Gardens come and present a horticultural therapy workshop at your facility, please contact us at 865-974-7151 or dstowell@utk.edu
For more information about the horticultural therapy certificate program, visit https://plantsciences.tennessee.edu/horticulturaltherapycertificate/.
The Tennessee AgrAbility Project is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under Award Number 2021-41590-34809.
References / Further Resources
FrontLine Gardens – https://frontlinegardens.org/
Deeds, E., J. Rennie, and D. Stowell. (2023). Therapeutic Benefits of Gardening and Accessible Garden Design. University of Tennessee Extension Publication W-1153. Retrieved from https://extension.tennessee.edu/publications/Documents/W1153.pdf
Stowell, D. and A. Burnett. (2019). Promoting the Profession of Horticultural Therapy through Partnerships. Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture. 29(1), 39-46.
Tennessee AgrAbility Project – https://agrability.tennessee.edu/
UT Gardens Horticultural Therapy Program – https://utgardens.tennessee.edu/locations/knoxville/horticultural-therapy-outreach/
University of Tennessee Horticultural Therapy Certificate Program –https://plantsciences.tennessee.edu/horticulturaltherapycertificate/
HEEDING THE CALL…
and Then Paying It Forward
“The Horticultural Therapy Certificate Program at UT-Knoxville introduced me to something that has become my new passion. As a disabled veteran and flower farmer, I saw this opportunity as another means for me to give back to my fellow veterans. Using plants as a method of healing and moving forward is something I wanted to be a part of and share with others.
Since becoming one of the first graduates of the program, I’ve been able to help design and manage a therapeutic horticulture program for the soldiers assigned to the Ft. Campbell, KY Soldier Recovery Unit and I also provide therapeutic horticulture activities for the Clarksville, TN Steven A. Cohen Military Family Treatment Clinic. I also was just elected as a Director-at-Large for the American Horticultural Therapy Association.”
CHARLEY JORDAN Military Veteran & Inaugural Class of 2022 Horticultural Therapy Program Certificate Earner
