Exploring the Meaning of Therapeutic Horticulture for Anishinabek Youth in a Brief Residential Treatment Unit: A Community Engagement CSL Case Study

This paper explored community-university engagement that integrated a short-term treatment facility for Indigenous youth, a social enterprise organization that focused on healing through horticulture therapy experiences and an interdisciplinary academic team. The focus was to discover whether a horticulture therapy (HT) approach held promise in terms of an appropriate way to expand community service-learning (CSL) with Indigenous peoples and to encourage more diversity of voices in community service-learning experiences. Youth participants took part in a photovoice study and further semi-structured interviews to document their perspectives on the meaning of their horticultural experiences. Findings revealed that youth valued the overall HT experience itself; being connected to the gardens and nature and the social interactions exploring spirituality and the self were significant and meaningful for them. Further, findings demonstrated that a collaborative partnership that engaged multiple service agencies to explore novel ways for engaging youth in healing activities with a university team that guided the research approach holds promise as a CSL with Indigenous youth. We conclude with recommendations on the significance of community-university engagement in delivering therapeutic horticulture programs for Indigenous youth as a community service-learning initiative.

Urban planning & mental health

This paper explores the potential for the built environment to serve as a determinant of mental health for the aging population. The exploration of situational and environmental context factors for health, such as low SES, low social capital, and social isolation has been stressed in health promotion. Specifically, the presence of accessible green space and facilitated interaction with the green space through activities such as horticulture therapy have been shown to be particularly beneficial. The quality of green space, distance to residential areas, and other factors have also been linked to the impact of the presence of green space on mental health. Much evidence indicates that incorporation of this space in cities can result an improvement in mental health through increasing physical activity and decreasing stress. Horticulture therapy has shown to have a positive effect on variables linked to mental health outcomes in older adults. This suggests a potential for inclusion of gardening-based community programming for cities with aging populations. However, there is a need for additional studies to confirm the effect size and find additional causal mechanisms to understand correlations between improved mental health outcomes and green space. There is also a need to consider the ways in which there can be large-scale coordination of policies on urban planning and healthy city design in North America.