asylum notes

American Horticultural Therapy Association

katherine ziff — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:08:55 +0000

Day Five of a week of resources devoted to the restorative good of nature: the American Horticultural Therapy Association. The organization is dedicated to advancing the practice of horticulture as therapy to improve human well-being. Its website at www.ahta.org has information on research, publications, grants and the professional field of horticultural therapy.

Photo by Matthew Ziff

flower power

katherine ziff — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 02:07:35 +0000

Last summer while offering a Touch Drawing workshop for staff of the Appalachian Community Hospice in Athens, our work space began to fill up with flowers. Brought by gardeners, the flowers were arranged by volunteers and then carried to patients by visiting nurses. The flowers, brought with love, were as healing as the art we were creating – a beautiful community practice. Hope in Bloom is another healing flower project: flower and vegetable gardens planted free of charge at the homes of women and men undergoing cancer treatment: http://www.hopeinbloom.org/

The asylum at Athens grew flowers year round in the nineteenth century, outdoors as well as in the greenhouse. They went in arrangements in the public spaces and were also sent as gifts to people and businesses in Athens. Photos by Matthew Ziff.

center for education, imagination and the natural world

katherine ziff — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 02:20:19 +0000

I think Frederick Law Olmsted and John Muir, who worked during the psychiatric moral treatment era, would have felt at home with The Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World. The Center, through a path of inner schooling based in contemplative, intuitive and imaginal ways of knowing, brings educators and children into a deep inner relationship with the Earth and Universe. Guided by a Council of Educators as the working embodiment of its mission, the Center offers publications, educator retreats, consulting and programs for schools. See https://beholdnature.org/

For the past two years I have been fortunate to participate, via distance learning facilitated by director Dr. Peggy Whalen-Levitt, in the Center’s Inner Life of the Child in Nature: Presence and Practice program for educators, which brings new perspectives to my work as a counselor.

Photo take on The Ridges, the new name for the site and landscape of the Asylum on the Hill.

children & nature on The Ridges

katherine ziff — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:02:27 +0000

The asylum at Athens admitted a few children, and certainly the children of its superintendents and physicians, who lived on-site into the twentieth century, enjoyed the grounds as a place to play. And for its whole history the asylum’s landscape was an outdoor play and recreation destination for Athens children and their families.

In these days of indoor play and lessons for children, the Children & Nature Network is a resource for the recent news, research and books about the benefits for children of being outdoors in nature. See http://www.childrenandnature.org/

Photograph by Matthew Ziff.

therapeutic landscapes network

katherine ziff — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 02:11:23 +0000

If I were an American asylum superintendent in the nineteenth century I would have bookmarked the Therapeutic Landscapes Network on my computer, had I one.

The TLN is a rich source of all kinds of information on gardens and restorative landscapes: resources, photos, designers, an inventory of healthcare gardens. Check it out at http://www.healinglandscapes.org/

The TLN blog has up-to-the-minute reviews of new research findings and upcoming conferences and grants: http://www.healinglandscapes.org/blog/

Photograph by Matthew Ziff.

restorative benefits of nature

katherine ziff — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 02:54:07 +0000

This evening I am feeling the benefits of an hour’s walk earlier through tree-filled neighborhoods in Athens.

Frederick Law Olmsted said it well: (natural scenery) employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; it tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influences of the mind over the body, gives the effect of refreshment and reinvigorates the whole system (from The Value and Care of Parks, 1895).

These days empirical research of every kind is published documenting the restorative benefits of nature for humans of all ages – a cornerstone of asylum-based moral treatment philosophy a century and a half ago. Every day this week I will post a resource based on this exploding knowledge base.

Painting of FLO, 1895 by John Singer Sargent at Biltmore House, Asheville, North Carolina.

the honey locust

katherine ziff — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 02:26:32 +0000

The old fields of the former asylum landscape on The Ridges support many fine specimens of the Honey Locust. Recently I learned a new use for the weapons-grade thorns of this tree: victrola needles. Victrola collectors find the mellow sound produced by the thorn more pleasing than that of the old steel needles.

fracking on The Ridges?

katherine ziff — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 02:29:55 +0000

The Athens News reports this week that Ohio University is looking at the land it owns, including its Ridges property, and will inform the state which of it is available for fracking. This is in response to a new state law that opens up public lands to oil and gas drilling.

One hopes the university will not squander this legacy, described well by Ora Anderson in 1988: “As far as the land is concerned, some of the most beautiful land that we’ve got left in the Athens area is located up there and it is of all kinds: heavily wooded areas that are old woods, small planted woodlands that go back to about 1930, open fields, pasture lands and meadow lands, the old orchard which is now a brush land…we have to determine the future (of it) on the basis of ecological values, educational values, as well as economic values.” Not to mention the noise, traffic and devastation to plants and animals generated by the practice of fracking.

seed catalogs and cucumber trees

katherine ziff — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:12:03 +0000

The seed catalogs in my mail these days made me wonder what the asylum’s nineteenth century gardeners were ordering in the winter, so I looked it up in the annual reports:

1876: flower and garden seeds, pots and seed pans, flower vases, and shrubs and trees.

1877: fruit trees – 86 apple, 100 cherry, 100 plum, 25 peach. Plus 450 currant vines, 754 grape vines, 100 gooseberry bushes, 900 raspberry shrubs, 1400 strawberry plants, and flower bulbs.

1878: 28 packages of seed, 5 cucumber trees, and 15 cherry trees. Now what is a cucumber tree? I discovered it is a large deciduous tree Magnolia acuminata. Its seed pods look like a cucumber. The largest known cucumber tree is in North Canton, Ohio at 78 feet tall with a trunk circumference of 288 inches.

katherine ziff — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:40:43 +0000

Therapeutic Landscapes Network Blog recently explored the connection between nature and health with this entry on the effect of garden walking on elders with depression. Another example of a tenet of nineteenth century moral treatment – walking out of doors in nature – used today as a complementary healing therapy

See http://www.healinglandscapes.org/blog/2012/01/effect-of-garden-walking-on-elders-with-depression/