Gardening and Nature-Based Activities in Practice

Gardening & Nature-Based Activities in Practice is a 4-hour online professional practice course designed for allied health professionals, recreation therapists, educators, activity professionals, and care team members who already have education or experience in working with people, and who want to strengthen their ability to use plant and nature-based activities in their existing practice.

This course introduces therapeutic horticulture as a guiding framework while focusing on the practical knowledge professionals need to offer safe, meaningful, and well-adapted plant-based experiences.

Learners explore core therapeutic horticulture concepts, domains of wellness, goal-driven activity design, and essential safety considerations, including plant toxicity and participant-specific risk factors. The course then moves into hands-on horticulture and activity-facilitation topics such as seed starting, transplanting, indoor plant selection and care, vegetative propagation, raised beds, container gardens, sensory plants, activity development, and adaptive tools.

This course is not intended to prepare learners to practise therapeutic horticulture as a standalone discipline or to work outside their professional scope. Rather, it helps professionals add practical horticulture and garden-based activity knowledge to the people-centred skills they already bring to their work.

By the end of the course, learners will have a stronger foundation for planning and facilitating accessible, purposeful, and engaging plant and nature-based activities in care, recreation, education, community, and therapeutic settings.