The Government’s Green Social Prescribing Programme to tackle and prevent Mental Ill Health focused on patients with mild to moderate mental ill health and much of the research relevant to STH assesses the impact on mental health. The NHS 5-levels model of mental health was adopted by the Nottinghamshire test & learn site to provide a framework that link workers and providers could both use to ensure referrals were appropriate to the patient's needs.
The Therapeutic Horticulture Stakeholder Group has taken this model further and defined 5 types of gardening for mental health that map to those 5-levels:
The document was created with inputs from a range of contributors including STH professionals, health care practitioners, academics, and policy officers.
The document can be downloaded below. It aims to provide much-needed clarity about how gardening can be used across a range of mental health needs, to assist health and social care professionals when assessing whether a gardening activity is suitable to meet the needs of the person they are working with, and providers to identify the level of need that they can support