Cultivated Therapeutic Landscapes: Gardening for Prevention, Restoration, and Equity

In this chapter, we conceptualise public realm greenspace as a therapeutic landscape, and explore its role and potential as a medium for civic environmental nature-based activities that generate health and wellbeing benefits. We outline common approaches that facilitate the process of cultivating and nurturing the local landscape, such as horticulture and practical conservation at a neighbourhood level. Such activities aim to achieve both physical changes to the landscape and positive social outcomes, both for individuals and the wider community. We explicate the key concepts relating to Green Social Prescribing (GSP) and the central tenet of therapeutic landscapes within the evolving GSP movement. Through a critical and multidisciplinary lens, we explore relationships between poor health, climate change, and biodiversity loss, and the implications for public realm greenspace and GSP. Key theories are detailed, leading to a discussion on critical practice issues for the sustainability and success of GSP. The chapter concludes with exemplar case studies that illustrate the efforts currently being made to address some of the critical practice issues, including delivery models and examples of integrated working, which sustain a public realm therapeutic landscape within a GSP context.