Speaker 1 00:04
With information on the latest developments in assistive technology and initiatives, from the studios of 2RPH in Sydney, RPH Australia brings you AbleQuest. Hello, I'm Barbara Sullivan. Our guest today is Stephen Wells, a nurse and horticultural therapist who believes that getting your hands dirty, potting plants and watering gardens, can have huge benefits for well -being and regaining physical skills.
Speaker 1 00:39
Stephen's love of plants started when he was a child growing up on a market garden farm in South Australia. He started a career in nursing and after 10 years began a career in horticulture. He manages the gardens across the Austin Health Network.
Speaker 1 00:56
Now he combines his medical training with his gardening experience, helping patients with disabilities. Horticultural therapy is a niche medical service not widely offered in hospitals and rehab, but Stephen says engaging with nature can benefit many patients.
Speaker 1 01:14
He spoke to Elaine Jontek from the garden about his passion for plants.
Speaker 2 01:19
So welcome to the program, Stephen.
Speaker 3 01:21
Hi Elaine, how are you? Great to be here.
Speaker 2 01:23
Ah, I'm really well today looking forward to the New Year's programs with AbleQuest. So how did you get interested in plants? Was this from childhood?
Speaker 3 01:32
Growing up in a gardening family, my parents and family, the heritages were market gardeners and orchardists. Dad had big veggie garden as well as a flower garden and both my parents were interested in gardens and gardening in the forestry and very often so I have green blood.
Speaker 3 01:49
Green blood? Wow. No royal blood in my lineage. It's definitely more green, which I'm very thankful for.
Speaker 2 01:56
What sort of orchards were they?
Speaker 3 01:58
They had an orange orchard. That was the predominant orchard. The Market Garden was cabbage and cauliflower, which they produced from seed through to market, but the growing in my era was predominantly the cabbage and cauliflower.
Speaker 2 02:12
So you decided on nursing as a career straight from school, did you?
Speaker 3 02:16
Yeah, I went into nursing studies straight away and it's something that I've come across during my latter part of schooling and did some work experience in that and really enjoyed it so that guided me and did that.
Speaker 3 02:29
I went to South Australia, thoroughly enjoyed that and been nursing now for 30 years.
Speaker 2 02:36
bulb. So tell us how you got into horticultural therapy.
Speaker 3 02:40
I went back to do some extra studies about 20 years ago now, horticulture. My interest was at that stage of getting into maybe garden design, but during that course, which was a two year diploma of horticulture course here in Melbourne, I came across the term horticultural therapy and heard about that.
Speaker 3 02:59
At the time it was of interest, but also I had in my mind thinking while I'm getting out of healthcare and doing garden design and this is an interesting topic. So I didn't pursue it straight away, but it was probably a few years later that I reignited that interest when I went back to nursing and started to develop a horticultural therapy program at hospital, which was great.
Speaker 3 03:23
So yeah, the term and the field was something that I came across during my horticulture studies and I was very thankful to hear about it, combining the nursing and the horticulture was really about realising that I had been within the healthcare system as a nurse for a reason and I realised that being in a position to fortunately be able to combine the both in the one facility that I was working at, which is a rehabs cognitive and physical rehab facility, was an opportunity that was really good to combine and to bring together.
Speaker 2 03:57
So it complements traditional medicine.
Speaker 3 04:00
Certainly, the Horticultural Therapy Program that we've established works in conjunction as part of the picture of providing health care. I'd like to say that the Horticultural Therapy's engagement with gardens and use of gardens is the golden chalice and the cure all, but it's not that, but it's a wonderful part of the health care provision and I've certainly seen examples of that.
Speaker 2 04:24
What kind of patients can you help? Do they already need to know about gardening?
Speaker 3 04:29
No, so in my experience, the wonderful thing about the horticultural therapy model is that it taps into and connects with various people of different circumstances or situations. Horticultural therapy generally as a model is more goal -orientated, so therefore works in the healthcare setting a bit more appropriately and suitably.
Speaker 3 04:51
So where I work is a rehab facility that caters for people with spinal cord injuries, acquired brain injuries, strokes, orthopedic and amputees, so it has a quite a mix of patients and varying reasons for being in hospital, so some of those elements of connecting with them in the horticulture therapy model is sometimes along the lines of physical connections and working on different strengthening or motor skills for example, whereas others it may actually tap into more of the psychological or emotional well -being connection and time in the garden and doing activities may actually tap into improving their self -esteem and cognitive improvements required during this, I think.
Speaker 2 05:37
So what activities do you do and is it individual or groups?
Speaker 3 05:41
Yeah, good question. I have, over the course of the years, I've been in the program, done both individual and group sessions. At the moment, it's tipping more into the more one -on -one sessions, but the activities I tend to do with people vary.
Speaker 3 05:55
So often inside or outside under, under shelter, but sitting perched around a table. We do a lot of activities along the lines of propagating and repotting of plants from one pot size up to another or watering of plants.
Speaker 3 06:13
So it's very low impact in the sense of physical context. A lot of people think if they are getting a referral to it, that we might be in the garden doing hard gardening activities. But in the setting that I'm in, it's those activities that I mentioned are the ones that often are very easy to engage people with.
Speaker 3 06:31
Often very, seems very purposeful for them as well. And in that context, they engage with them. So the program I do is a one day a week program. So the plants that I like to use in my setting tend to err on the side of things like succulents because they're very good to work with.
Speaker 3 06:49
They have interesting colors, textures, shapes, but also have a very good success rate. And for me, that's important part of it. When I'm working with patients, if I was to use other materials that I couldn't sustain during the week and look after when we came back the next week and they were all looking wilted or killed over dead, that's not really a good experience for the patient and individual I'm working with.
Speaker 3 07:13
I like to use plants that have a good success rate. And then that then caps into people being able to see that what they're doing is working and is of benefit and has a success. But I don't just use succulents as other examples I use with patients.
Speaker 2 07:32
So how do you think it supports other medical treatments and therapy?
Speaker 3 07:37
I think as part of the holistic approach, the big approach, I see it as something that works with other modalities. So when I'm working with a patient, the referral may come through that it might be based on a physiotherapy direction or an occupational therapist or a speech therapist.
Speaker 3 07:59
So what I'm doing is tapping into the goals that have been set by other team members and aligning the activities with some of the things that the members of the team are working on as well. So it's that collaborative approach rather than fire load approach.
Speaker 2 08:16
Can you give us an example about how that would work with some of your patients?
Speaker 3 08:20
One example that comes to mind is a young gent who I worked with who had a spinal cord injury. He had some use of his upper limbs but not the full strength of the finer, like his fingers and wrists could support some strength through there but didn't have that fine motor control or finger control.
Speaker 3 08:39
But one of the interesting enough, given that, one of the activities that he was very passionate about and interested in doing was actually doing bonsais. And one might think that you would need to always use your fingers with that.
Speaker 3 08:53
But given that it was something that he was passionate about and interested in, what we worked together on was where he could use the tools and the snips and the secateurs to create the shaping of branches.
Speaker 3 09:05
We would use those tools that would then build up the strength in his wrists. But where he couldn't, that's when he would guide me, I would use some of the finer tools under his supervision. So it was that tapping into both the physical strength but also for him, the opportunity to be the one that's taking the control and taking the oversight of what's done because he was the person in that scenario that did all the research, he went off and watched YouTube clips, watched videos, all sorts of things to learn himself and then would bring that back.
Speaker 3 09:40
So there was the activity we were doing in the sessions but also it tapped into for him that thought of researching, looking and guiding that. Another example was working with a lady who worked collaboratively with the physio and she, we would have a raised garden bed that we would be working at but she was a lady who was in a wheelchair and building up her strength in her legs.
Speaker 3 10:05
The ultimate goal of the session collaboratively was for her to build up her strength and her balance while standing and also her endurance but also the time that she would enjoy standing at the raised garden bed, potting up and planting and digging.
Speaker 3 10:23
So it was a good collaborative process where the end goal was her physical goals in a real and practical way for her, a tangible way. Don't we go back to that young Jen who was working with the bonsai, one of the things that he made a comment during the session was that he got him thinking, oh maybe I could do a business and be bonsai on wheels because it was a play on him being in a wheelchair and that was his life now but the thing that struck me about that was for him it was the optimism of what he could do.
Speaker 3 10:55
In a time when he was very much confronted with what he was not able to do, his approach and that opportunity facilitated the optimism of possibility model, working with what people can do knowing what they were needing to be working on but also looking at moving forward.
Speaker 3 11:13
So it taps into the psychological as well as the engaging the physical needs of the patient at that time.
Speaker 2 11:20
So you must have favourite plants that you use for therapy, but are they different from what you enjoy cultivating yourself and looking at?
Speaker 3 11:28
I think there's a bit of an overlap there myself. I guess working in the program's context, I need to be very realistic about the plants that I use and as mentioned, the success of them and how they can be used well with the patients I work with.
Speaker 3 11:45
There's a whole lot of other plants in this wonderful world that are good to work with and so yeah, there certainly are other plants that I enjoy either in my own garden or within the gardens that I create at the hospitals as well.
Speaker 2 11:57
I know nurses and doctors should practice what they preach, so can you tell us briefly about your garden and how you've created spaces for relaxation and fun?
Speaker 3 12:08
Yeah, certainly. That's a very good point. If I'm professing that this is the sort of thing that we need for well -being, then I certainly subscribe to that and have spent good time in my own garden creating a space that is a bit of a sanctuary for me.
Speaker 3 12:21
It's an environment that feels quite lush and encompassing and enveloping. I've created spaces in my gardens that encourage me to rest and to sit amongst the garden. I've got a lot of interest in creating zones, depending on the space of the garden.
Speaker 3 12:39
I've filled it with some sitting areas, some nice spaces for people to come over and catch up with friends. I've even got a recycled garden slide in my garden. Garden slide? Wow. A slide that goes down, I've got a bit of an embankment, so I've got a slide that sits on the ground that goes down the embankment.
Speaker 3 12:57
For a bit of fun, I've got friends that have kids and so when they come to visit, there's something for them to enjoy in the garden as well. So yeah, I like to create spaces that offer opportunity for rest, but also a bit of fun.
Speaker 3 13:09
But ultimately, a sanctuary and a space that for me fills my bucket and fills my energy levels and helps me in managing my day in life as well.
Speaker 2 13:21
Well, it's been great to talk to you, Stephen, and you're gonna continue this area of nursing.
Speaker 3 13:27
Definitely, so I still work as a nurse part -time as well as doing the horticultural therapy roles and gardens, roles that I do here at Austin Health, so yeah, it's certainly good to combine the both and keep them going.
Speaker 2 13:39
Once been great to talk to you today, thanks very much for your time.
Speaker 3 13:43
My pleasure Elaine, great chatting with you too.
Speaker 2 13:45
And that was Stephen Wells, nurse and horticultural therapist at the Royal Talbot Rehab Centre in Cue, Victoria.
Speaker 1 13:57
You have just been listening to AbleQuest, a program that looks at developments in assistive technology and initiatives. From Elaine Jean -Tek and Barbara Sullivan, thank you for listening and goodbye till next program.
