The Horticulture Therapy had widely adopted in elderly, people with disabilities and also people who survive from disasters, like earthquake and typhoon. They are the service subjects in Taiwan welfare policy. After 30 years development, two biggest Horticulture Therapy education and research centres have built up and also a certification system.
Although the technology of the therapy is from Western Countries, the centres make their efforts to plant the technology in Taiwanese way. They developed mixed up therapy programs, which combined western elements: horticulture and chromatology, and eastern elements: Chinese medicine and local handicraft. They called the therapy programs as “prescriptions”, which is connected the Horticulture Therapy’s original identity, a type of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
Due to the disadvantaged minority service client, the therapy is a famous technology to the social workers and clinical psychologist. Many welfare institutions will hold the Horticulture Therapy group for their resident. Most resident got significant improvement on emotion relaxation exercise and social skills. To prove the effects, many scales are developed. The Horticultural Therapy seems an evidence-based technology. When it bumped into aboriginal people’s life, it made their social worker confused because the “garden” is a part of their home and life. They put more cultural ideas into the typhoon survival group. Then it makes the therapy technology showing variant aspects in practice.
The paper presents the route of the Horticultural Therapy Technology development and the mixture faces of the Horticultural Therapy.
