My blog name is related to the Garden Route, the diverse South African landscape that follows the Western coast. I hope one day to return to this corner of the world to see the wildflowers of the Cape Floral Kingdom, which is the smallest, and yet the richest of the world’s six floral kingdoms. My youngest years were spent living in the beautiful cities of Cape Town (where I was born) and Rio de Janeiro. Impressions of mountain landscapes, rich vegetation and the sea are permanently imprinted in my memory.
My maternal grandparents were farmers in Zimbabwe. Later they sold the farm and moved to South Africa to be closer to their children. Even living in a small flat in Fish Hoek they continued to garden. They took care of the garden beds at their building and the pavement outside their back door was always overflowing with containers filled with all sorts of plants. My grandmother especially enjoyed making rock gardens and growing cacti. My mother is also an avid gardener who is constantly extending the flower beds and naturalizing areas of the family home along the Rouge River in Markham. I must admit that I now wish I had shown more interest in gardening while growing-up and had paid closer attention to the lessons that surrounded me. I strongly feel that the outdoor spaces my grandmother and mother created form who I am today and have subconsciously influenced the path I have selected to experiment with: horticultural therapy. Other influences included my grade three teacher who kept a vermicomposter in the classroom, the students from the Developmentally-Delayed Program at Unionville High School who invited me to participate in their garden and a former roommate who shared her native plant garden and exposed me to the concept of naturalized gardening.
I have always been interested in a variety of environmental and social justice issues and have sought out opportunities for creating, and participating in, community building processes. One day while leafing through a copy of Harrowsmith Country Life magazine I came across an interesting article about gardens for the blind that discussed the benefits of horticultural therapy and sparked my interest in this emerging field. Horticultural therapy excites me with the possibility for bringing together practices related to healing both the land and people through intentional work with plants and gardening.
Currently there is only one formalized post-secondary program in horticultural therapy in Canada at Malaspina University-College. With the path for students in this field still being unclear and predominantly self-directed, I have decided to keep a blog to capture my own journey as a horticultural therapy student in Canada. The space provides a chance to reflect on the process, to gain feedback from others in the field and to share my own experiences along the way. While I have chosen to use “uniblogs”, I am not pursuing an institutionalized education but still consider myself a post-secondary student finding my way.
My blog is a space to grow ideas linked, but not limited to, horticultural therapy.
