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Horticultural therapists use gardening to improve their clients' health and wellbeing.
You could work: evenings / weekends; managing your own hours
In your day-to-day duties you may:
You could work in a garden, on a country estate or in a therapy clinic.
Your working environment may be outdoors in all weathers and physically demanding.
You may be able to get into this job through:
You could do a foundation degree, higher national diploma or degree course in horticulture, although this isn't always essential.
Some universities offer horticulture courses that include modules on social and therapeutic horticulture.
You could do a degree in a relevant subject and take further training in social and therapeutic horticulture. Relevant degree subjects include:occupational therapy; social work; mental health or learning disability nursing; teaching
You'll usually need:
You may be able to work towards this role through getting horticultural skills from an intermediate horticulture operative or a higher horticultural supervisor apprenticeship. You could also consider an occupational therapy degree apprenticeship.
With experience you could then take further specialist training courses in social and therapeutic horticulture.
To get onto an apprenticeship, you'll find it useful to have:
It can be really useful to get experience of working on a horticulture project, or as a horticultural support worker, on a paid or voluntary basis. You'll get a better understanding of the role, and make contacts who could help when looking for work.
Volunteering opportunities are available with Thrive if you live within travelling distance of their gardens in Battersea (South London), Birmingham, Gateshead or Beech Hill (near Reading). Thrive also has details of other horticulture projects in the UK.
You can find out about other local volunteering opportunities from Do-IT and NCVO.
You can attend short courses run by Thrive, a national charity who offer Step into Social and Therapeutic Horticulture workshops.
You'll need to:
You may have an advantage if you are moving into this career from other areas of horticulture or jobs such as social care, occupational therapy, nursing or teaching.
You can join the Chartered Institute of Horticulture for access to industry newsletters, events and support.
You can find out more about becoming a horticultural therapist from Thrive and the Chartered Institute of Horticulture.
You could use horticultural therapy as part of a wider role, like occupational therapy. With experience and further study, you could move into a supervisory role, or research.
You could become self-employed or teach and supervise trainees of therapeutic horticulture techniques.