Publicity
The Healing Power of Plants
By JOHANNA BATES, Gazette Intern, Daily Hampshire Gazette
Tuesday, January 29, 2002
In the bright, diffused light inside the Bear Hill Gardens greenhouse at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leeds, Francis Janik sits in his wheelchair at a table with a spade and a pile of soil. He is transplanting some cuttings - healthy green stalks of a houseplant with long, spear-shaped leaves.
Janik, 50, is quietly engaged in his work, but answers questions with a smile. His gentle face lights up as he speaks slowly and with some difficulty. He says he enjoys "putting in the soil mix," filling the seedling containers with dirt. He seems happy and at ease.
Sitting by a sink in the back of the room another patient, Conrad 'Dino' Loconte, 68, is pruning a hanging plant, while staff members Maureen Liebl and Lorraine Brisson chat with the men, helping them get started on their work.
Janik and Loconte are participants in the medical center's horticulture therapy program. They are the only ones who have shown up so far to work in the greenhouse today, though as many as 30 veterans, both in- and out-patients, are involved. Part of the mental health vocational rehabilitation and incentive therapy programs at the medical center, it is one of several Incentive Therapy stations throughout the veterans hospital where patients can work.
Confidence, responsibility
The Bear Hill Gardens greenhouse is the retail outlet where houseplants, seasonal plants, bedding plants, cut flowers and, in the warm months, vegetables are sold. Patients in the horticulture program are paid to work in the store, in one of the other two production greenhouses, in the quarter-acre outdoor garden or in the many ornamental gardens on the grounds of the center.
The idea behind horticulture therapy, says Brisson, who is incentive therapy coordinator, is to help patients gain a sense of confidence and responsibility from learning about plants and helping living things grow. She says that participants benefit from the physical activity of handling the plants, working outside in the warmer months and socializing with their peers in the greenhouse and the public in the store. "Here, they're getting therapy without really realizing they're doing it," she says.
Bright and warm inside
It is easy to see why it might be therapeutic to work in the greenhouse. Although it is dark and snowy outside, it is bright and warm inside. The air smells sweetly of growing things.
Surrounding Janik, there are shelves of tiny cacti and houseplants and plants hanging from the ceiling. In the center of the greenhouse, there is an enormous orchid with scores of blooms. All of the plants look healthy, clean and well-pruned.
Brisson says that Francis Janik, who had little prior experience with plants, needed a lot of assistance at first. Now, Liebl and Brisson give him a project and he works independently, "which is a goal for our patients," says Brisson. She says Janik has also become more talkative since joining the program in 1998.
Pausing from his work, Conrad Loconte leans back in his chair while Liebl brings him more plants to clean and prune. Loconte, who has been in the horticultural therapy program on and off for about eight years, says he enjoys working with plants. Though he keeps leaving, "he always comes back home to us," says Liebl. "They keep sending me back," Loconte jokes. Everyone laughs.
The program, which began in 1973, operates five days a week, and patients may work full time or part time, one to eight hours a day, depending on the their needs and abilities.
Liebl and Brisson say the program provides a family atmosphere for the participants. Even on the weekends, when they are not working but the staff might be in, patients will stop by the greenhouse to visit Liebl or Jim Pruner, the program's other full-time staff member.
"They know they can come to me if they have a problem," Brisson says. Patients talk to her about "drinking, depression, family issues, medical issues. It runs the entire range," she says. Patients are particularly anxious just before discharge, says Brisson, and they may tell her of their fears about returning to the community outside the hospital.
Nature's healing power
The soothing power of plants has long been assumed but is getting some scientific support. John Tristan, Director of the horticultural training program at Durfee Conservatory and Gardens at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, says that horticultural therapy "is so simple, it's profound."
Tristan teaches courses on horticultural therapy and has published numerous papers on the subject. Most recently, he has been conducting research studies involving the use of horticultural therapy to reduce stress in UMass students. The initial results? His studies show that a walk in a beautiful garden can reduce blood pressure, "as much as medications would," he says.
CHARLES ABEL
Gary Quesnel places plant name tags
in pots in the Bear Hill Gardens
greenhouse. Veterans may work full
or part time in the horticulture
program, which operates five days a
week.
"Reconnecting people to nature - that's what we're doing," Tristan says. He is a firm believer in the healing power of nature. He half-jokes that we should all know about this: "Didn't our grandmothers tell us to be sure to smell the flowers?" he quips.
As for the actual effects of horticultural therapy on veterans at the center, Brisson says, "They might act out on their ward. They come here and they're different. They're more relaxed." Brisson says that ward staff have told her that this improvement in behavior often persists after the in-patients return to their residences.
Horticultural therapy patients provide cut flowers for the day rooms and nurses stations in the center. Once a week, every female veteran in residence gets flower in a bud vase in her room.
The flowers, plants, seasonal vegetables and seedlings grown by the patients are also for sale to the public through the Bear Hill Gardens greenhouse. The shop has existed for 11 years, but it got its first sign on Route 9 in December of last year. "Everyone says our tomatoes are the best around," Brisson says proudly.
Fulfilling career
Brisson, who is president of the Northeast Chapter of the American Horticultural Therapy Association (AHTA), based in South Easton, has been working in horticultural therapy and at the veterans hospital in Leeds for 13 years. As an undergraduate at UMass, she majored in plant and soil Sciences. She then went on to earn a master of science degree in horticulture from North Carolina State University.
Brisson says she took the job as horticulture therapist at the VA Medical Center after five years in the commercial greenhouse industry. She says she wanted to apply her science background to a "more fulfilling" career. A year later she joined the board of AHTA, where she has attends workshops and conferences to learn about the therapeutic aspects of horticulture.
Combined, Liebl, Pruner and Brisson have 46 years of horticultural therapy experience at the medical center. Avid gardeners themselves, Brisson and Liebl say they believe wholeheartedly in the health benefits of gardening not only for veterans hospital patients, but for everyone. Both say they garden all day with their patients, and go home and garden some more. "It's as much therapy for me as it is for the client," says Brisson.
The Bear Hill Gardens retail outlet is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and on weekends in season, 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. For more information call 584-4040, Ext. 2106. To learn more about horticultural therapy in the Pioneer Valley, visit the UMass Durfee Conservatory Web site.
