Well, they’ve gone and done it again. The American Horticultural Therapy Association has published another great volume of the Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture. I swear, the journal alone makes the annual membership at AHTA worthwhile. Some of the articles are very specific to horticultural therapy (no big surprise there), but many of them are broad enough to pertain to the work that landscape architects and other designers do. I think any self-respecting healthcare-focused landscape designer/architect should also be a member of AHTA.
Here are some of the articles in this year’s issue (Volume XIX):
“Integrating Horticulture into the Vocational Rehabilitation Process of Individuals with Fatigue, Chronic Fatigue, and Burnout: A Theoretical Model.”
“Survey of Hort. Therapy Programs in Tennessee.”
“It’s More Than Seeing Green: Exploring the Senses Through Gardening.”
“A New Model for Hort. Therapy Documentation in a Clinical Setting.”
“A Theoretical Perspective for Using Hort. Therapy with Children.”
And then there are the 23 AHTA Annual Conference Abstracts from 2008, many of them compelling enough to make me want to contact the authors. And building on the last blog post about the importance of PLAY, many of these articles and abstracts have to do with connecting children and teenagers with nature. Good stuff!