Healing Greenery (2018-) – Green Care Education and the Development of Health-Promoting Environments
The international Nordplus project Healing Greenery was launched in 2018 to introduce students to the principles of Green Care and develop their capacity to use natural environments to support human health, well-being and social inclusion. The project brings together students and academic staff from higher education institutions in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland, integrating landscape architecture, social work, medicine, agronomy and economics through collaborative learning and development activities.
The project is grounded in the understanding that healing environments emerge through the interaction of people, nature and intentionally designed spaces. Green Care involves more than spending time in nature: it entails the purposeful use of nature and nature-based activities to support well-being. Students from different disciplines therefore work together, combining knowledge of human needs, plants and the environment, spatial planning, service provision and economic feasibility. Integrating disciplinary knowledge and fostering collaboration between students and academic staff are central to the project.
Landscape architecture plays an important integrative role in Healing Greenery. Landscape architects shape the environments in which Green Care activities take place, translating knowledge from health care, social care, ecology and agronomy into spatial design solutions. Designing healing gardens, parks, community gardens, outdoor spaces at care facilities and other green environments requires simultaneous consideration of human well-being, accessibility, safety, plants and biodiversity, spatial experience and the long-term functioning of the environment. The project thus contributes to the development of landscape architecture as a discipline that connects the design of natural environments with objectives for human health and well-being.
Each project year explores Green Care in relation to a different target group or setting. Previous themes have included the development of green environments in kindergartens, community gardens and urban parks as settings for fostering social cohesion, educational services, and green therapy for different age groups.
A key strength of Healing Greenery lies in interdisciplinary and international learning. Landscape architecture students develop a deeper understanding of the social and health-related needs of different user groups, while students in social work and health care gain insights into how spatial and natural environments affect people. Agronomy students contribute knowledge of plants and productive landscapes, while students in economics help assess the feasibility and sustainability of proposed solutions. This collaboration prepares students to address professional challenges that cannot be resolved through the knowledge of a single discipline alone.
The project integrates teaching, practical application and applied research. Working with real-world environments and user groups provides opportunities to investigate how Green Care principles can be implemented, which spatial and nature-based solutions support well-being, and how the experience gained can inform subsequent teaching, research and design practice. The project’s experience has also been discussed in academic publications as an interdisciplinary approach to designing healing environments.
Healing Greenery therefore strengthens the role of landscape architecture in creating environments that support health and well-being, while building connections between spatial planning, nature, health care, social care and other disciplines. International collaboration enables participants to compare knowledge and practices across countries and contributes to the development of Green Care as a field in which evidence-based practice, experiential learning and spatial design are mutually reinforcing.
Project implementation: Kadri Maikov https://www.emu.ee/en/contacts/kadri-maikovlink opens in new page
LinkedIn: https://ee.linkedin.com/in/kadri-maikovlink opens in new page
Project information: https://www.etis.ee/Portal/Projects/Display/8e56e92e-b1a3-471f-983f-392968e8dfe2link opens in new page
