Authors: Tracy Ann Hayes, Mark Christie, Karen Leckie, and Sam Grimwood

1. Feeling Thankful: therapeutic and
educational benefits of agriculture and
horticulture
Dr Tracy Ann Hayes, Dr Mark Christie,
Karen Leckie and Sam Grimwood

2. Foreword
This slide show:
• Is designed to complement the research paper titled Feeling Thankful:
therapeutic and educational benefits of agriculture and horticulture, by
introducing the project team, picking up on key points in the text and
providing information in a visual format.
• Includes illustrative images, figures and quotes from the research study.
• Provides a reference list for the paper and links to further information and
resources.

3. Acknowledgements
• Funders: National Institute for Health Research, Applied Research
Collaboration, North East and North Cumbria (NIHR ARC NENC).
• Their vision is “to achieve better, fairer health and care at all ages and in all
places”.
• NIHR ARC NENC theme: Inequalities and Marginalised Communities.
• University of Cumbria:
• for supporting this research and ethical approval.
• Their vision is “to transform lives and livelihoods through learning, applied
research and practice - for now and for our future generations”.
• Collaborating organisations, partners and participants – especially
young people.

4. Project team - Mark
Dr Mark Christie:
• Lead for project, co-researcher and co-author, .
• Professional background in sports facility management, and sport
development.
• Senior lecturer and researcher in sport and physical activity development,
with related interests in health promotion, community development and
social prescribing.
• Voluntary practitioner in community work, organising community events,
developing new clubs, and supporting community development planning
processes.
• Wild swimmer, cyclist, walker and keen gardener.

5. Project team - Tracy
Dr Tracy Ann Hayes:
• Co-researcher and lead-author.
• Qualified youth worker (JNC) and community development worker (ESB), with
professional and practice experience in working with children, young people
and families.
• Specialised in environmental youth and community work.
• Research interests in applied, practitioner research in the community,
covering a range of subject areas including people-nature, conservation-
education, and health and wellbeing, using narrative, creative and arts-based
approaches.
• Story crafter, walker and keen gardener.

6. Project team - Karen
Karen Leckie:
• Research assistant, data management and transcription, co-author.
• Registered Occupational Therapist, BSc and MA, with professional and
practice experience working in NHS, third sector and senior lecturer in Higher
Education.
• Keen interest in understanding the meaning and value of 'occupations’ on
people's lives.
• Undertaken research exploring social and therapeutic horticulture in
palliative care.
• Passionate about research and the learning it brings.

7. Project team - Sam
Samuel Grimwood
• Volunteer research assistant, advising on research methods, co-author.
• Psychologist, BSc and MSc in Clinical Psychology,
• Experience as assistant psychologist within NHS previously, volunteer in care
farm settings, currently a final year PhD student.
• Interested in how innovation can help reduce psychological distress, which
includes innovative technologies, qualitative methodologies and psychological
interventions, across the life span.
• Passionate about collaboration, inter disciplinary working in both research
and clinically – opportunities to contribute to real world application and
positive significant impact.

8. The NENC region
Source: https://arc-nenc.nihr.ac.uk/our-research-themes/inequalities/

9. What does literature tell us?
There is a lot of literature related to this project, including:
• Farming/agriculture,
• Gardening/horticulture,
• Young people/educators/farmers,
• Nature/environment,
• Care/green care/caring
• Therapeutic/therapy
Terms are often used in an interchangeable way – which can be problematic.
In our project settings, there are no ‘therapists’, there are educators,
farmers, gardeners and volunteers from the community.

10. Care Farms provide...
... health, social and educational care services on working farms or
purpose-built farms through farming-related activities.
Three key elements for care farming include (O’Neill, 2020):
• Purposeful work,
• Social interaction and
• Being outdoors.
These elements can be applied in school garden settings
This report provides a useful overview, and includes a glossary
https://media.churchillfellowship.org/documents/ONeill_J_Report_2020_Final.pdf

11. A working farm

12. School Gardens

13. Theory of Change

14. Learning activities were
grounded, practical and
purposeful
• Opportunities to experience the
elements – sun, wind, rain, hail,
snow – requiring the necessary
equipment and mind-set to cope.
• Educators discouraged over-
protection and enabled calculated
risk, whilst encouraging
independence and teamwork.

15. Potential mediators
Restorative properties of being outdoors
One commented that ‘things are too close to
me inside’. He prefers to be outside. When he
leaves school he would like to work in a
nursery…
From researcher’s fieldnotes
Extent of social interactions
e.g. sitting together
outside
Varied activities of meaning to individuals
e.g. Making scarecrows
Interactions with plants and insects
Flies are important, I thought they were just flies, but
they’re important to nature…
From Young Person on TH project

16. Potential moderators
Sense of empowerment
E e.g. feeding sheep
Quality of adult leadership
…with those kids who are difficult to engage,
horticulture, working alongside or in parallel with study
on a job or project, it levels out things and allows you to
do something together, rather than you being the
teacher, them the student, it’s about you both working
together, and that’s been very beneficial.
Teacher from one of the schools
Perceptions of safe space to engage with
… it’s easier to have those difficult conversations in the
garden, things you need to have, from a safeguarding
perspective, to have somewhere that is a safe space to
talk…
Teacher from one of the schools
Accessible activities tailored to individual
needs
e.g. measuring animal feed

17. Soft fascination (Kaplan, 1995)
• We observed them gently handling worms, snails and greenfly.
• One young person revealed their fascination for various insects
including greenfly, woodlice, ladybirds and centipedes which:
... you see under rocks or the ground, or on the rocks somewhere…
referring to a big family of woodlice as
… all in together, under the rock... there's hundreds.
• Also mentioned mosquitoes as 'annoying' and the cold of the winter,
although acknowledged there is still work to do in the garden in
winter, such as checking on the pumpkins.

18. Initial themes identified – used to inform guidelines for
practice
Resilience
Young people learn how
to fail/make mistakes
and then move on...
Learning
activities are
grounded,
practical &
purposeful
Protective /
challenging
Discourage over-
protection and
enable calculated
risk
Appreciative / social
thank you for food,
thank you for farming,
thank you for friends
Encouraging
independence
and teamwork
Healing
opportunities
for being
outdoors –
calming, caring
/ stimulating

19. Collaborative
1. Took our preliminary findings back to the settings:
• With more fieldwork to check preliminary findings –
participant observations – working alongside.
• Focus groups and interviews – using creative methods.
2. Meetings with project team, partners and collaborators.
3. Individual reports and posters for each organisation.
4. Conference presentations with educational and health
audiences.

20. Three key elements of TH-TA
purposeful
work
social
interaction
being
outdoors

21. 10 suggestions for practice
1. STAFFING: have trusted, supportive, and suitably experienced staff as role
models.
2. CARING: relationships that provide support (and firmness when required) to
establish pro-social behaviours, promote re/integration into education/training
relevant to the individual.
3. FAILURE: TH-TA provide opportunities for young people to experience and learn
from success and failure, helping to develop resilience and coping strategies.
4. EMPOWERMENT: offer a choice of activities, enabling young people to make
decisions.
5. NATURE: ensure young people are given opportunities to connect with the
natural world.

22. Suggestions for practitioners (continued)
6. TRAUMA-INFORMED: recognise trauma and/or loss means behaviour may be
erratic; providing safe space for discussions is important element of therapeutic
process.
7. SENSITIVITY: awareness of young people’s needs by considering what has brought
them to the project (background contexts of school and/or home).
8. PARTICIPATORY: involve young people in research to give them ownership of the
process and treat them as an equal partner.
9. COLLABORATIVE: involve external organisations (local horticultural specialists) to
assist the learning process.
10.HOPE: develop young people’s skills and attributes to engender hope for the
future, with access to appropriate knowledge acquisition and qualifications in
farming/horticulture.

23. Final thoughts
Drawing on the words of one of the staff members we spoke with:
Each young person has unique needs and it is important to understand each person -
engagement in the garden / farm itself acts as a therapeutic process, simply in terms
of the personal growth involved with young people in terms of their personal agency.
Facilitated by the process of engagement - mirroring the plants in going from seedling
to full grown (goslings to geese) – thus, developing social skills is an essential element
in helping those who struggle with social situations to be more confident.
With the young people we spent time with, this was a relatable transformation.
• How may these findings apply to other outdoor spaces?
• How may this extend to mainstream education?
• How may this offer a way of responding to Covid-19?

24. Final words…
We finish with words from one young participant in response to
questions about what they had been learning:
We’ve been learning that plants can grow
into different types of plants and flowers.
This research study has shown that so can people, when provided with
sufficient space and care. Something to be thankful for…

25. References
Bragg, R. (2020). Social Farms & Gardens: Growing Care Farming. Thrive
Carson, R. (1956). The Sense of Wonder. New York: Harper and Row
Christie, M.; Cole, F. and Miller, P.K. (2020). A piloted think aloud method within an investigation of the impacts of a therapeutic green exercise project for people recovering from
mental ill-health: reflections on ethnographic utility. Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture, 30(1), 36-55. AHTA. doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.13026.35529.
Fell-Chambers, R. (2021). ‘To fit in at school, you have to be a robot’: Do care farms offer a viable alternative? BERA Blog. London: British Educational Research Association.
Available at https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/to-fit-in-at-school-you-have-to-be-a-robot-do-care-farms-offer-a-viable-alternative
Hayes, T.A., Leather, M. and Passy, R. (Eds.) (2021a). Wellbeing and being outdoors: BERA Blog Special Issue. London: British Educational Research Association. Available at
https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog-series/wellbeing-being-outdoors
Hayes. T.A.; Christie, M.; Fell-Chambers, R. and Robb, M. (2021b). Educating therapeutically in outdoor spaces. BERA International Annual Conference, September 2021 [online].
Kaplan, S. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: towards an integrative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15, 169-182.
Mind (2022). Young people failed by approach to mental health in secondary schools across England. Available at Almost two thirds of young people receive no support from
school for their mental health – Mind
NIHR (2022). Our Research Themes. Available at https://arc-nenc.nihr.ac.uk/our-research-themes/inequalities/
Noland, C. M. (2006). Auto-Photography as Research Practice: Identity and Self-Esteem Research. Journal of Research Practice, 2, M1.
O’Neill, J. (2020). Care Farming: the benefits for farmers and the rural community. Available at https://media.churchillfellowship.org/documents/ONeill_J_Report_2020_Final.pdf
Owens, M.; Townsend, E.; Hall, E.; Bhatia, T.; Fitzgibbon, R. and Miller-Lakin, F. (2022). Mental health and wellbeing in young people in the UK during lockdown (COVID-19).
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(3), 1132.
The National Autistic Society (2022). What is autism? Available at https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/what-is-autism
Tracy, S.J. (2013). Qualitative research methods: Collecting evidence, crafting analysis, communicating impact. Sussex: John Wiley & Sons.
Veen, E.J.; Pijpker, R. and Hassink, J. (2021). Understanding educational care farms as outdoor learning interventions for children who have dropped out of school in the
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WHO (2021) Adolescent Mental Health, Key Facts. Available at https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/adolescent-mental-health