Under the Glass: News From the Greenhouse

Leah Diehl, RLA, HTM

A common goal in therapeutic horticulture programs is to help clients find meaning and purpose. Your life purpose consists of the primary motivating aims of your life—the reasons you get up in the morning. Purpose is unique to each person and can guide your decisions and behaviors, provide direction, influence your goals, and create meaning in your life. Purpose may be related to taking care of others – your family, friends, or people less fortunate. It can also be connected to your work and its mission. For some people, purpose is related to religious or spiritual beliefs. For many people, more than one of these things contributes to life meaning and purpose. Your life purpose is your contribution to society, your community, or your family. Overtime, your life purpose can shift as you age, accumulate more experience, and respond to evolving priorities.

Horticultural therapy practitioners often start working with someone because there has been a big shift in their life – disease, injury, trauma, or mental illness. In many cases this event has changed their life significantly and they may now be struggling with their life purpose. Many of the individuals in our therapeutic horticulture program here at Wilmot Botanical Gardens have not been able to work for a long time because of a disability or disease and they often feel that they have nothing to contribute, which leads to a decrease in self-esteem. It can be hard to maintain positive self-worth or self-confidence when you feel that you no longer have purpose or are contributing. Clients going through this may have a lot of questions they are wrestling with such as: What fulfills me? Where do I belong? What is my value? How do I contribute?

While we can’t provide these answers for our clients, we can help them to see new ways to feel valuable, and that can be through growing and maintaining plant and gardens. Growing and caring for plants is inherently meaningful, and if we can help our clients to recognize their role in that process, we can help them to build their self-esteem and recognize their contributions. While growing and selling plants is certainly valuable it’s not the only way to build self-esteem and self-worth:

  • Beautification of spaces around us positively effects many people beyond our therapeutic horticulture program.
  • Enhancing outdoor areas for wildlife has value, both from an enjoyment perspective (viewing wildlife) but also for environmental stewardship.
  • Growing and providing herbs and vegetables for disadvantaged communities, school cafeterias, or homeless shelters; growing ornamental plants for Habitat for Humanity homes – these are all meaningful and impactful ways to contribute.

No matter the type of plant care clients are involved in, we must make sure that they recognize what they are doing for the TH program and the gardens. Without their help we would not be as successful serving all our groups and the hundreds of people that visit the gardens each week for stress relief and restoration, exercise and relaxation, and many other things. Taking time to look around and appreciate all that they have contributed is key in our program along with talking about and enjoying the feelings of contribution. That helps to restore self-esteem, self-worth, and purpose.I have learned that clients might not make that connection on their own so one of the most important jobs I have is to facilitate that recognition of their important contributions.

We hope you will come by and enjoy their contributions as well. Happy Holidays!

Elizabeth “Leah” Diehl, RLA, HTM
Lecturer, Dept. of Environmental Horticulture, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
Director of Therapeutic Horticulture, Wilmot Botanical Gardens, College of Medicine