Green Care: A Conceptual Framework - Frisk i naturen

The treatment of tuberculosis during the 18th and 19th centuries also
invoked the use of fresh air and sunlight as curative agents (Bird, 2007).
Typical Victorian asylums included outside design features called ‘Airing
Courts’ (walled areas which adjoined the house and were divided into
sections for patient use), grounds for leisure, sports grounds, fields and
sometimes as estate farm. An ethos of asylum regimes featured exercise and
work out of doors and remained so until the mid 20th century (Bird, 2007).
In the same vein, hospitals for more general physical diseases were also
designed with grounds for aiding patient convalescence. Gardening work
was seen as a way of helping people who were recovering from physical
injuries to strengthen and build up damaged bones and muscles. In his
book, The Rehabilitation of the Injured, Colson (1944) describes different
gardening activities that may be used as therapy and lists specific activities
to develop movement in particular joints (pp. x-xvi).
As rehabilitative medicine and care developed, gardening was used to
‘treat’ not only the physically injured but also those with mental health
problems and learning difficulties. It became one of the ‘specific activities’
of occupational therapy as the discipline developed in the 1950s and 60s
and it is still used today. However, the activities used in occupational
therapy have tended to vary according to the availability of facilities and
changing attitudes and it is not known how many occupational therapists in
the UK currently use gardening.
During the 1940s several Therapeutic Communities were established in
rural, farm settings, where the benefits of nature were recognised as being
integral to the therapeutic experience. Therapeutic communities (TCs) are
group-based treatment programmes (i.e. providing group psychotherapy)
which first came to existence in the UK during the Second World War and
now exist in a variety of settings, such as the National Health Service,
the educational and criminal justice systems and the voluntary sector
(Association of Therapeutic Communities, 2009). The Therapeutic
Community movement has grown and whilst not all TCs use natural
settings, many still use farms or gardens as a focus to their work (see, for
example, Hickey, 2008).
Another form of therapeutic communities often in rural settings are the
Camphill Communities founded by Dr Karl König. Konig, inspired by
Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy of anthroposophy (see for example, Steiner,
16 Green Care: A Conceptual Framework