Home Farm Alumni News

(Left to Right: Nancy Lee-Colibaba, Sylvia Piano Onetto, Christine Pollard, Maria Arana and Estela Cardeza D.)

Christine Pollard, HTM
Home Farm

*Photos courtesy of Maria Teresa Riveros.

This was my third trip to Chile to support Marie Arana of Herbarium in her Horticultural Therapy Education endeavors. Every trip is a different experience with vignettes that make each trip unique. Just having Nancy Lee-Colibaba of the Royal Botanical Gardens with me on this trip was such a treat. Being able to share the experience with her and then have Nancy share the HT presentations allowed me to enjoy my first experience listening to Nancy and spend more time appreciating the experiences and passions of the students.

One of the most moving outcomes of participating in HT seminars with students is seeing how the student then goes on and applies their HT knowledge. The last day of this year’s seminar was dedicated to new HT programs and educational opportunities established by previous students.

After Maria gave us an update on the programs at Herbarium, our first presentation was by Jeanette Olivares Herrera, a psychologist with Cultiva, an organization dedicated to rehabilitative, vocational and community connection programs for people with mental health issues. The Cultiva program is conducted in a commercial nursery in Santiago. The 19 participants work at the nursery as well a produce their own plant products, compost and mosaics for sale. The nursery has provided clubhouse space that includes a kitchen, activities room, bathroom and office. Jeanette and another HT student of Herbarium, Patricia Herrera Parra, administrator of Cultiva, are successfully using Horticultural Therapy to evaluate, assess and plan rehabilitative interventions for Cultiva.

Another former student Francisca Muller Montes, an agriculturalist, and Carolina Urbina of the San Cristobel Waldorf School presented on the use of the school garden to meet the teaching philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, education through process and emotion. In the garden once per week, the students individually garden in an area of one square meter to learn the rhythms of life and practical life experience.

The next presentation was by Maria Paz Iturriaga, an Occupational Therapist and educator with The Professional Institute of Chile and former Herbarium HT student. Maria has successfully added Horticultural Therapy to the fourth year Occupational Therapy curriculum at the institute. She brought two of her students that have successfully created a “Sowing Life” mental health program, a long term care “Seniors of Atardecer” HT program and a 7 week HT workshop for the participants of the Montecarmelo Special Needs School. Thank you Maria for taking HT to another educational level in Santiago!

Christine Raffo, President of the Argentine Garden Club (AGC) and former Herbarium HT student gave the next presentation. The Garden Club is all volunteer, mostly women that, among other things, aid various organizations and are great supporters of HT. The AGC is also a member of the National Garden Club (US) supporting world social needs.

Carlos Kaiser, former Executive Director of the National Fund for Persons with Disabilities, said that HT was not a therapy for differences but for commonalities. HT is not artificial but natural.

The next presentation by a Herbarium HT student was by Claudia Bustamante and Bernadita Salas of Manos y Naturaliza, an after school program for children of working parents. They provide support for 80 children 6-8 years old. Though the club houses do not feed the children as they are fed at school, their club houses have hot water, soap and shampoo so that good hygiene can be modeled. Manos y Natualiza provide happy second homes. Their neighborhood does not have gardens so they participate in Pillpa, the children’s garden at Herbarium. The children learn to grow and then eat the vegetables from the Pillpa garden.

Also attending the seminar was Sylvia Piano Onetto, President of the Garden Club of Chile. The Garden Club of Chile is now supporting the Colegio Humberto Aranda for special needs children. The teachers asked for help to plant a grazing garden at the school. Now that the garden is planted, the garden club is now planning to teacher the teachers about horticulture so that gardening can be incorporated into the school curriculum.

So Alumni, as you can see, the roots have spread far since the germination of HT plantings!!

HT and Neurorehabilitation: Working with people with TBI

By Lynn Larkin in Peterborough, Ontario.

My background is more in horticulture than human services….18 years in the horticulture industry and 4 in human services.  For 2 years now I have been working as a rehabilitation assistant (RA) in the community with people with traumatic brain injury (TBI).  The treatment plans are set up with client by the therapists of the interdisciplinary team.  I assist client and report back to the team.  The horticultural therapy (HT) courses, the experiences shared by Christine Pollard and classmates and courses that I have attended through the Ontario Brain Injury Association (OBIA) have been of great benefit to me.  Aside from learning new knowledge,  these courses always remind me when working with people with disabilities whether cognitive or physical about the need to always be mindful, present, client centred and professional.

In the community setting the RA is the person who spends the most time with the client with regard to the interdisciplinary team.  The RA becomes part of the client’s life and this is why it is so important to maintain professionalism and client-centredness….the friendly professional I suppose.  It is my job to support the client toward meeting their goals whether it be to live independently, re-enter community or return to work/school.  The ‘real life’ context in which I work can be challenging, requires big shoulders and great patience because I have to be able to deal with the behaviours that accompany TBI which usually take form in angry outbursts or inappropriate comments.

• Brain first approach….If something is going wrong think in terms of the injured brain first.

• Where is the brain injured?  Dr. Sherrie  Bieman Copeland & Dr. Dawn Good

Judith Falconer PhD writes “Head injured individuals require tight structure in their daily lives to survive, grow and improve. Most of us lead highly structured lives….which allows us to put  our lives on automatic pilot. Far too often, head injured individuals have no structure in their daily lives and therefore accomplish very little each day.  Tight structure increases the capabilities of the injured individual and reduces the need to continually make decisions”.  I work with a client who sustained a TBI to frontal lobe.  He said that time means nothing to him.  He puts things off that he wouldn’t have pre-injury, he is unable to multitask, easily distractable, has trouble paying attention to things, gets frustrated very easily, has a poor memory.  He is not the person he used to be. I see him 3x/wk for 3-4 hours each time. His goal is to live safely and independently and he is working on that by developing  routines around instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) such as cooking, banking/paying bills, grocery shopping.  Roger Wood, Professor of clinical neuropsychology writes that continuum of care needs to be ’slow stream’  because of the persisting cognitive deficits that impose important constraints on learning and rehabilitation.

More excerpts from my notes on Neurobehavioural disability by Roger Wood….

Often people with TBI lose their social role.  Many are not able to live independently in the community, maintain employment, maintain relationships….goal is to prevent disability from becoming a social handicap. He talks about structured rehab, assisting person with TBI to ‘live life’.  Rehabilitation is   long-term, not intensive, interdisciplinary, community based and  psycho-social, goals have to be meaningful to the client. The rehab team helps the person with TBI accept the disability without  losing  identity.

• A good read…‘Participate to Learn’:  A promising practice for community ABI rehabilitation, Brain Injury, October 2006: 20(11): 1111-1117.  Study done in Ontario

• Participate to learn vs. Learn to participate

• Learning is result of experience in real life activities

• 3 important characteristics…living, loving, doing

I work with an OT who promotes my experience in horticulture to clients who have an interest in gardening and I have had the opportunity to use HT in some treatment plans.  The activities varied from sowing seeds, garden planning, walking through the local ecology garden, making plant labels.  She will also encourage my clients to attend the farmers market with me for the social outing.  I have used HT to simply build rapport with a client who was considered ‘difficult’ by the team.  She became more flexible as she was able to make some decisions about her treatment, gained some confidence by just getting out to the garden and is now willing to work at her original goals.

My long term goal (dream) is to develop a community garden with programs for people living with TBI and  mental illness.  A community garden program would help to meet the physical, cognitive, emotional, social needs of the population I work with. To be able to provide a welcoming/safe environment for them to be socially included and a vocational outlet  for clients to learn skills needed to ‘live life’ by helping them to generalize what they learn to home, work and meaningful activities.  I cannot say when this will happen because there will be so much to do to get this off the ground.  Assignment #4 is in the works!!

Thanks for reading…please email any comments/questions to larkin [at] nexicom [dot] net