Of Dreams and Gardens

by John Cannizzo, Director of Internship Program, The Horticultural Society of New York

The curriculum tool that HSNY is preparing for our work at one of the horticultural therapy urban farms that we are working at is completed. Soon curriculum for others will be added. These curriculums are individualized to the special needs of groups with schizophrenia; acute depression and bi-polar disorder.

Many of the individuals at the residences or institutional spaces where these farms are located have been institutionalized by prison, suffered homelessness and are struggling with poverty and underemployment, though in some cases they are well educated, articulate and possess employable skills.

But a word about schizophrenia. I am in the uncomfortable position of someone that, on one hand, believes he has a well founded conviction but, on the other hand, is afraid to indulge in using anecdotal information to make a point that I am not qualified to make by education.

But I can’t help but point out that the well documented similarity between schizophrenic associations and the associations of dreams coincide.

If it’s possible to say that the control in our lives comes from will power – a mental process – then the person that is schizophrenic is a person that doesn’t carry thought through to its logical conclusion.

In the course of developing this curriculum (which makes strong use of the talents of the individuals in this group) a very suggestive result has manifested itself. The designs for the garden and the illustrations that participants prepared are incredibly vivid and well realized, detailed and accurate.

The opportunity to dream what the garden will be allowed the gardeners to enter into a world of possibilities stimulated by thought forms beyond the prerequisites of other activities that they are engaged in, with the exception of creative activities like painting and drawing.

It almost seems that the horticultural therapy activities of imagining what the garden will look like in the real future provided a formal productive content for an acute tendency to dream in waking life – with the exception that a real-life result logically grounded in natural law came out of the process.

*All photos courtesy of John Cannizzo

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Seed starting is a powerful experience. Though I tell the gardeners to put only 2 of the tiny seeds in each cup they cannot resist the temptation to put in more. If 2 are good then 7 will be better. It is a cheap insurance policy against failure. This leads to thinning out which is always difficult – how many must be sacrificed so that the rest can flourish.

The concept embodied in the design becomes a reality through the planting. A farm in the midst of traffic rumble is an unlikely dream come true.

Organic agriculture is a 40 billion dollar business with demonstrated health benefits for individuals with certain kinds of illnesses. How much more efficacious is food that has been nurtured from seed to fruit by the hand of the person that will subsist in part by it -- when the vegetative cells that are transformed into human cells already have an intimate relationship with the farmer?