Horticulture presents an opportunity to improve our health and quality of life also helping reduce the country’s financial challenges in treating conditions such as mental health, obesity and physical inactivity, ageing and social isolation.
The Charter is a collaboration of horticulturists, planners, designers, healthcare professionals and policymakers. The Ornamental Horticulture Roundtable Group has instigated a Health & Horticulture Forum that will deliver the following Charter:
Our vision is to incorporate horticulture into everyone’s life through the Charter’s five objectives:
- Consolidate the existing published evidence base to demonstrate benefits.
- Develop a common language to increase awareness of the sector to policy makers, commissioners and service users.
- Strengthen training and support in horticulture for healthcare professionals.
- Make gardens and green spaces that promote healthy outcomes for all.
- Create a robust evaluation framework for commissioning horticulture for health and wellbeing.
In order to positively impact on the health and social wellbeing of the nation and to tackle the decline in green space, the Charter will promote specific actions that support healthcare professionals and the Government to increase the use of horticulturally-based health interventions.
The Charter stands for working together for people, plants and the planet. Actions will be undertaken to:
- Increase the number of GPs and clinical commissioning groups prescribing horticulture and gardening;
- Embed existing evidence-based health principles into the design of horticultural activities and landscapes;
- Challenge financial and any other systemic barriers;
- Work with policy makers and commissioners to adopt a standard evaluation framework to promote the benefits of horticulture.
