Horticultural Therapy (Therapeutic Horticulture)

Horticultural therapy is the deliberate and structured use of horticultural practice and contact with living plants for the purposes of psychic and somatic care; its formal clinical documentation begins with Benjamin Rush, founding father of American psychiatry. Its central principle: the relationship between the human and the living plant is in itself a therapeutic agent, simultaneously summoning the body (motor skills), attention, affectivity (caring for a living being) and the long temporality of the seasonal rhythm. Mediation through the living lowers the transferential charge, explaining its effectiveness with patients reluctant to verbal work. Its domain extends toward somatic rehabilitation, special education and public health prevention.

This therapy is covered in detail (principles, indications, protocol, level of evidence) in Volume 7 of the Mémento des Psychothérapies. See the volume.