Healing Gardens

Gardening in Healthcare/ and food!

I think my greatest inspiration has come from the connections between gardening and healthcare and gardening and food.
These two areas are very important to me, and I am so glad to have learned so much about gardening and respect for the land in order to support these interests I have.
I am very passionate about the absurdity of the health care system in this society. As in, I think it is absurd and I want to change it. I have been working in the healthcare field since my first job in a nursing home and I feel very called to this type of work. To understand the approaches to healing of indigenous cultures who depend largely on the plant life of their native area for healing, has broadened my perspective of this matter.
I think that just in addressing poeple's symptoms or ailments with an eye or ear for which plant my have the right energy for that individual makes so much more sense than claiming to heal someone by perscribing them whatever drug happens to be advertised on the pens in the office....
I think that self-care through gardening is very powerful, and so accessible and appropriate for any population. I think that the joy of interacting with plants and of showing love in this way is positive for the very young as much as it is for the very old. I think even before taking a medicine that one may have grown or made, the energy from that type of activity can be very healing.

The same is true for food. I think these two subjects are so interrelated because many of the most extreme health problems are due to nutritional problems (diabetes, heart disease, obesity). People have become so detached from their food and their medicine that they dont even realize any more that they are one and the same. To grow your own food is to nourish yourself and your loved ones and that type of energy is healing. It is its own preventative of illness.