Therapeutic horticulture Committee

Our committee’s program is a bit different from the other volunteer opportunities with MCMG.  While your gardening knowledge and master gardening training can be put to good use creating any number of actual Therapeutic Horticulture projects, a key component of this program is the meaningful way you will get to connect with a special needs, mostly elderly, population. We are a community outreach activity with approximately 15 weekly and monthly on-going programs in Montgomery County.  Most of these are at senior assisted living residences and nursing homes and several are in gardens, including the Derwood Demo Garden, which has served autistic youth groups during the growing season along with five flowers beds dedicated to growing plants for our programs.  As well, the Plant Room at the Holiday Park Senior Center in Silver Spring serves an active senior community gardening advice and plants for sale. The goal of our programs is to bring a hands-on experience in the garden or with nature to a target audience who are either no longer able to be outside gardening or need assistance to do so.  Through projects incorporating plants, flowers, vegetables and herbs and focusing on the seasonal changes in our local environment, we hope to invigorate their senses, promote their awareness of the natural world around them, and to foster creativity and socialization. Whether making a floral arrangement of fresh or dried flowers, planting seeds in a garden bed, growing lettuces in a salad box, pressing flowers for bookmarks, or potting up houseplants, every project has an educational component with a specific topic and theme which master gardeners present to accompany the physical work product.  A dedicated group of over 100 master gardeners put boundless energy into these programs hoping to inspire and bring a meaningful experience to the people we serve.

TH is an immensely rewarding volunteer program that rather uniquely combines the pleasures of gardening with ample opportunities for creativity, teaching and working closely with other master gardeners and the programs participants.  Our programs thrive on the varied skill sets of the master gardeners in each group.   For every crafty, creative volunteer who knows their way around Michaels, loves to spray paint, and owns a glue gun, there is someone else whose home garden provides amazing plant materials for projects and another person who is a wiz with plant propagation.  Bringing these skills together is what makes a great team for TH projects.  We hope this description will help you to more easily see yourself as one of our TH volunteers.

• Most programs are held once a month while a few are bi-monthly and others, the autistic program at Derwood, are weekly in the growing season.

• Most programs have an average of 5 or 6 master gardeners on their teams.  TH volunteers are expected to commit to be a member of a TH program team (some volunteers commit to 2 or 3 programs) and are expected to maintain this commitment on a regular/long term basis.  This is not a drop-in activity.

• Projects are usually one hour in duration with extra set-up and clean-up time.  All time spent is counted towards volunteer hours.

• Most TH programs take place on weekdays.

• Most of our current programs are open to new volunteers.

• Everyone is welcome to visit any of our programs, just contact the program leader.

• We have a group email for TH as our group’s main means of communication between members about anything related to TH. You can find information about how to join this group email list at the end of this page.

• The variety of projects include: growing vegetables, herbs, flowers and houseplants, making indoor topiaries, planting terrariums, dish gardens, and self-watering container gardens, forcing bulbs for indoor blooming, propagating plants, and numerous forms and thematic ways of arranging and creating things with fresh and dried flowers.

• Most projects are very collaborative with project leadership being shared by two people each time and rotating these duties throughout the year among each team's volunteers.

• Leading a project is a great way to earn lots of volunteer hours since all of the planning and prep time (typically 4-5 hours) is in addition to the actual time presenting the project.

• Proposals for new programs in our county are always welcome and the chairpersons are available to facilitate starting and staffing new programs at centers who want to offer our Therapeutic Horticulture projects to their residents.

• Most plant materials for projects are provided by the gardens of master gardeners and the designated beds at the Derwood Demo Garden with all other purchased materials being paid for by the facilities where the participants reside.

• Additional volunteer opportunities for our committee include the planning, planting and maintenance of the five Therapeutic Horticulture beds at the Derwood Demo garden.

Each Fall, we host an Annual Therapeutic Horticulture Workshop geared towards interns and those who are new to and interested in learning about TH. At the Workshop, we have full demonstrations of many example projects and offer tips and training from our most experienced and creative program leaders and team members. This is the single best way to jump into the work of our committee and to meet the master gardeners who are running and working at these programs throughout the county.  Typically, in late winter or early spring, we host a meeting for all volunteers and leaders for the Therapeutic Horticulture Program.  In conjunction with this meeting, we hold a Materials Exchange where donations of a variety of materials for projects we have collected are free to and made available to all of our volunteers to use for their programs. This allows us to keep the cost of projects within a reasonable price range.   

See the TH Centers list in the section below to locate programs at which you may be interested in volunteering. The centers list shows all of the current Therapeutic Horticulture Programs, their locations, and meeting days/times. Email TH chairs, Wendy Band, Lisa Diamond  Carol Logun, and Eleni Clark, to be put in touch with the leaders of any of our programs. Emailing or talking with the leaders will give you a good idea about how their specific program runs. Visiting that program at an arranged date can be helpful if you are not certain about committing to monthly participation.