“It’s not about how to take care of plants; it’s about how plants can be used to take care of people.”

That’s how Agriculture Professor Douglas Airhart defines horticultural therapy, a medical practice that uses nature, plants and gardening processes to provide a wide range of therapy and rehabilitation programs.

Douglas Airhart shows a child in our Child Development Lab how to make a birdfeeder from peanut butter, sunflower seeds and a pine cone.

“The gardening enthusiast who comes home from a stressful day at work and hoes in his or her vegetable garden for an hour may be reaping positive mental and emotional results from that activity — but that’s not the same thing as horticultural therapy,” says Airhart. “Horticultural therapy is a clinical process with measurable objectives and outcomes that are closely monitored by a medical team of therapists or rehabilitation professionals."

Because of his interest and expertise in the field, Airhart is often called on to give workshops — such as one he led recently at the Memphis Botanic Garden — showing how therapists and rehabilitation professionals can incorporate horticulture into their clinical programs.

Clara Ray, a technical horticultural specialist who’s working on a project in Putnam County’s Dry Valley Alternative School, attended the session.

“The workshop really helped me put in perspective the specific issues of assessing children with behavioral problems, as opposed to children — and even adults — with mental or physical disabilities, who are the clients for many of the other workshop participants,” she says. “I know plants have had a major impact on my own life, so I will feel good if I can use plants to help just one other person turn his or her life around."

In addition to addressing client issues, horticultural therapy also involves environmental aspects, Airhart says, such as the relaxing effect of the color green.

“What I like best about it is that — at its core — horticultural therapy has the ability to increase self-esteem and self-confidence on both individual and social levels,” he says. “It can be as simple as taking a cutting from a plant, rooting it in soil, giving it to people as a gift and seeing them smile, but horticultural therapy teaches people skills they can use to help make themselves and others happy."

The groups who may benefit most from horticultural therapy include:

* People with physical, mental, psychological or developmental disabilities.

Someone who’s suffered a traumatic brain injury and needs to work on motor skills, for example, may be encouraged in traditional physical therapy to try squeezing a soft rubber ball a certain number of times per minute.

“If a patient loses interest in that activity, a therapist who’s skilled in the practices of horticultural therapy might then hand her a pruning tool and discover that the patient is happy to clip dead leaves from plants until her hands are too tired to prune any longer,” Airhart says.

* Victims of abuse or the abusers.

* People recovering from illnesses or hospice patients seeking enhanced quality of life in their last days.

* And accomplished or novice gardeners — even people who’ve never gardened before.

“One of the first horticultural therapy activities I learned was to make a bird feeder from a pine cone smeared with peanut butter and rolled in bird seed,” Airhart says. “That’s an easy, inexpensive activity that can be applicable to patients being treated for a wide variety of conditions.”

Horticultural therapy can be effective for people of all ages.

“A child with a chronic illness who doesn’t want to take his medicine can be given a plant to care for and instructed that the water and fertilizer are the plant’s medicines,” he says. “That way, the child sees firsthand how the plant can thrive with proper care or wilt from neglect.”

Although the positive interaction of people with plants has been noted as far back as ancient Egypt, Benjamin Rush — a medical professor in Philadelphia who is often considered the first psychologist — noted in the late 18th century that field labor in a farm setting had a curative effect on mentally ill patients.

In the two world wars, horticulture provided a diversion for wounded soldiers with long hospital stays.

But it wasn’t until Alice Burlingame, a trained psychiatric social worker, started a geriatric horticulture program at Michigan State Hospital in 1951 that she began to realize horticultural therapy warranted study as a distinct profession. With professional interest in the new field steadily increasing, the National Council for Therapy and Rehabilitation through Horticulture formed in 1973.

Airhart developed an interest in horticultural therapy as a graduate student at the University of Georgia in 1978, and began serving on the NCTRH board of directors in 1980. When the group changed its name in 1988 to the American Horticultural Therapy Association, he served as its first president.

At TTU, Airhart teaches the School of Agriculture’s horticultural therapy course every other spring semester.

“During my introductory lab session, I take students to the greenhouse and tell them to pick out a plant that looks how they feel,” he says. “It’s late in the afternoon, and they’re tired from a long day, so most pick out plants that are just a little bit wilted.”

Once, however, one of the students picked out a plant that was “green, perky and looked like it was just absolutely beaming,” Airhart says. The student who’d selected it said it was the best day of her week because she’d been asked out on a date that morning.

“Students in most classes don’t always have the opportunity to interact with each other or their instructor on such a personal basis — but that just goes to show you the power of plants!” he says.