Intensive Training

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS The Glass Garden offers an intensive five-day program for professionals in landscape architecture and design who are interested in creating therapeutic gardens at healthcare facilities. The training enhances knowledge, skills and experience in the planning, design and management of gardens for residences, hospitals and other treatment centers. The program gives the trainee the tools needed to design creative and aesthetic interior and exterior gardens that enrich the facilities and meet the therapeutic needs of the target populations.

BOTANIC GARDEN PROFESSIONALS Training is also offered to botanic garden professionals who want to integrate special populations into their programming, outreach, and facility. Topics include safety issues, program development, design for children, clinical practices and outcome evaluation.

EDUCATORS AND THERAPISTS The Glass Garden staff members are on the faculty and offer classes at the New York Botanic Garden and Rutgers University. They present sessions at annual conferences, symposia, and workshops around the country, demonstrating the techniques and benefits of horticultural therapy to educators, therapists and other professionals.

INTERNS The Glass Garden has an active and rigorous horticultural therapy intern training program. Interns experience a wide range of programming for children to the elderly and participate in the entire range of garden activities.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS Through the City-As-School, the Glass Garden offers science credit internships to high school students from this alternative New York City school. Students work one semester in the horticultural therapy program and focus their learning experience on the horticulture aspects or the patient rehabilitation components, or both.

RESEARCH INIATIVES The Glass Garden research initiatives are designed to explore the beneficial effects of natural settings and horticultural activities on human health and well-being. Improved cognitive, social and emotional outcomes for the varied populations served by the Glass Garden are evaluated. Past projects have looked at the effects of horticultural activities on mood and stress levels in cardiac rehabilitation patients, the range of benefits perceived by general rehabilitation patients, attitudes toward participation in the garden programs, and the meaning of therapeutic gardens for those who visit them. Our goal is to include a research component into all Garden programs to further the understanding of the impact of the natural world on wellness.