Saturday, January 1, 2011

Gardens that heal

While all of us nature bloggers and enthusiasts are convinced of the therapeutic powers of the mere presence of trees and plants, I have to hand it to Shobha, Babu & team from Nizhal and Charlotte from the Raven Charitable Trust for leveraging this to full steam!

Shobha, Babu and the team at Nizhal in Chennai started out earlier in the year with greening the prison grounds in Chennai and in doing so, providing occupational therapy to the imnates. Horticulture has been a huge hit with the inmates and the program has now spread to the prisons in Cuddalore, Pudukottai, Trichy, Palyamkottai and Madurai! Join Nizhal on facebook and read more about the program.

Charlotte of the Galloping Gardener fame is also the founder of the Raven Charitable Trust in Rajasthan. She, along with others, has started the Disha hospital to provide healthcare to the rural poor. And come Febraury, Charlotte is off to Rajasthan to start a garden for Disha. Read all about it at Jardins sans Frontiers, her new blog.

Great going Shobha, Babu & Charlotte!! I hope to record more of your successes in the year to come.

3 comments:

Carol said...

Charlotte is truly a remarkable and generous spirit! Great to read about this. Happiest of New Years!

Anonymous said...

I'll check them out. I've been thinking about my sister's loss and how the garden has helped (to some extent) in the healing process. It is therapeutic. What a nice post to start the year with!

Charlotte Weychan said...

Thank you for the mention! Happy New Year and perhaps one day you'll come and visit our garden in Rajasthan.