Article Review Assignment: Therapeutic benefits of a specific activity

Article Review Assignment:  Therapeutic benefits of a specific activity 

Name of article:  “Community Gardening in a Senior Center: A Therapeutic Intervention to Improve the Health of Older Adults”

Name of journal:  Therapeutic Recreation Journal

Name of author(s):  Elizabeth N. Austin, Yvonne A. M. Johnston, and Lindsay Lake Morgan

I found this article off of the Therapeutic Recreation Directory website and typed it into Google scholar to find the full text PDF.  It can also be found in the Therapeutic Recreation Journal.  I found this on November 2^nd, 2011. 

                The reason I chose this article is because I don’t know a whole lot about using gardening as a recreation tool, so I wanted to gain more insight.  This article also had to deal with the older population and the therapeutic benefits that gardening had on their improvement of health.  Knowing the benefits of physical exercise, elderly still do not always engage and that sort of activity, which leads to deterioration of health.  Spaces for gardening need to almost always be private if you are seriously trying to use it as a therapeutic tool; actually nursing a plant to maximum growth, keeping animals and other species away from the plants, and controlling the weather (sunlight or water).  This can get very expensive so a research study was done on the benefits of gardening, to back up the cost.  This article states that gardening has been proven to:  give opportunity for exercise, provide nutritional and economic benefits, improve physical and mental well-being, and give a place for social interactions.  As TR Specialists, we are qualified to plan, teach, and give leadership if necessary to help seniors with their gardens.  I think gardening is a good way to provide recreation because it’s not only calm but the clients are benefitting from the activity almost immediately without even realizing it. 

                I would really recommend TR students reading this article because it uses the leisure ability model in detail and an outline for the research so we can really relate to the purpose.  It also gives a lot of insight on the aspects of gardening that can be utilized for therapy.  For example, if a TRS was trying to start up a community garden, because they are so expensive, they could use this article as a means of persuasion by showing administrative board members the benefits and how they outweigh the negative (if any) impacts of gardening with seniors.  Sometimes as TRS’s we will need to fight for funding money and really prove ourselves that we are just important, if not more important, than everyone else.