Cultivating Well-Being through Therapeutic Horticulture
By Colleen E. Griffin and Laura Simonds-Rumpf
Cultivating Well-Being is a mental health and wellness initiative for students, staff, and faculty members of Southern Maine Community College. This program is facilitated by two registered horticultural therapists, Laura Simonds-Rumpf and Colleen E. Griffin.
Horticultural therapy (HT) is an ancient practice, yet an emerging profession in the state of Maine. HT employs gardening and other plant-rich activities to produce a non-judgmental environment of emotional comfort and social ease. It is often utilized to help reach goals and objectives of a wellness program or a case management plan.
Cultivating Well-Being provides individuals with stress reducing tools needed in the daily grind of life. An added benefit to the program, participants learn how to successfully grow plants and as a result, consume more fresh fruit and vegetables, improving their diet as well as their emotional and physical well-being. We also put emphasis on the vocational aspects of gardening, such as propagation, germination, weeding, watering, and harvesting techniques. Growing hydroponic greens in the greenhouse is popular among the program participants. This activity also offers the student altruistic opportunity as the harvested greens are donated to the Captain’s Cupboard, the on-campus food pantry.
Wellness Walk on Campus
Cultivating Well-Being also offers a Wellness Walk for Rest and Restoration, using the meandering pathway along the shoreline at the edge of campus. This is open to the public and accessible to all abilities. Six QR codes are attached to the fence line, each offering a different prompt for reflection. Using a smartphone, walkers are invited to pause, sense the surrounding beauty of Casco Bay and to look within themselves. Special attention is given to stimulating all five senses: taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing. In the coming weeks, we will be adding poetry created by SMCC students.
Laura recently moved back to Maine, her home state, after conducting horticultural therapy for those living with dementia, developmental challenges, and brain injury in Seattle, Washington. Colleen, also a Mainer, has experience working with special needs children and adults in educational/vocational programs and conducted HT programming for Dempsey Center in Lewiston. We were both at a point where we were ready to start a new HT endeavor and decided to collaborate. We have similar approaches to HT and agree on what this program should provide participants. After a bit of research, we concluded that a mental health and wellness program for college students was where we wanted to start.
We chose Southern Maine Community College because it has a thriving horticulture program, and the campus serves not only traditional students but a wide range of individuals. Colleen had gone through the horticulture program in 2015 - 17 and knew the Chair of the Horticulture Department, Cheryl Rich has an interest in horticultural therapy as a career option for students. We have received amazing support at SMCC. Everyone from student services to the horticulture faculty and maintenance department have been more than willing to work with us as we grow Cultivating Well-Being on campus.
Our program offers two 90-minute sessions weekly, typically in the greenhouse. We will offer three on campus “community events" this semester, Fall 2022. These events take place in a larger classroom or public space to accommodate more people. The community events will include, creating succulent mini gardens, a botanical dye activity, and Kokedama-a form of Japanese bonsai.
The Science Behind Horticultural Therapy
Caring for plants, either houseplants or an outdoor garden, provides interaction with the healing powers of nature. As humans we have an inherent need to be in the presence of nature. When we place ourselves in a natural environment, several physiological changes take place. Our breathing slows and regulates-we breathe easier. Our blood pressure lowers, and clarity of mind occurs. These subtle changes move us out of a fight or flight state and into a rest and restore state. Due to the pandemic many have been stuck in a chronic fight or flight state, which can produce stress-related illness, like anxiety attacks, insomnia, and depression.
The focus of Cultivating Well-Being is rooted in stress reduction and self-care awareness. Being a student is stressful at the best of times. Being a student during a global pandemic can quickly become overwhelming. This trend is evident as we see, across the nation a higher-than-normal percentage of dropouts in college and university programs. The necessity to avoid social contact imposed by the pandemic has also heightened feelings of isolation and loneliness. Cultivating Well-Being strives to build community by engaging participants in communal activity, meeting participants’ ability and comfort level as they are. The intention of our program is to make the student aware of stress triggers and provide tools to manage stress with healthy behaviors, like breathing exercises and using the wellness walk.
At the end of the spring 2022 semester we surveyed all program participants. 62% stated their overall stress level was reduced by attending our sessions. 50% found they had developed a new self-care habit and over 87% said they found benefit from social connection during sessions.
We also noticed some significant changes in the participants over the course of the sessions. One student contacted us saying they suffered from extreme social anxiety and was hoping our sessions would help. At the first session this student was very withdrawn, not really speaking to anyone else. The student continued to attend sessions regularly and toward the end of the semester, they not only interacted easily with other participants but would also take the lead in helping someone who might be struggling with an activity. It was very rewarding to see this behavioral change.
In another instance, we were meeting with one of the on-campus counselors, who mentioned a comment from one of their students, who had attended at least one Cultivating Well-Being session. This student expressed how happy they had been to see the diversity within the participant group and noticed that people were generally happy to be there. These are examples of the effectiveness of bringing people together with plants for the specific purpose of improving quality of life.
Conducting Cultivating Well-Being on the campus of SMCC serves not only the students, staff, and faculty members. It does have a broader reach. Today’s students are tomorrow’s health care providers, first responders, engineers, and electricians. These students will be entering into the fields of environmental science, education, sustainability, among other fields. We all need these individuals to be successful. Not only here at SMCC but within the communities where the students live and for the future of the state of Maine.
For more information about horticultural therapy visit: The American Horticultural Therapy Association at www.ahta.org
Northeast Horticultural Therapy Network at www.nehorticulturaltherapy.net
To learn more about the program at SMCC please email colleen_griffin@msn.com or visit www.isrhorticulturaltherapy.com