Best Practices Nature and Health

This chapter deals with practices in which nature is a succesful instrument to improve health.

- Health walks: WHI is the 'Walking the way to Health Initiative' and it aims to get more people walking in their own communities, especially those who take little exercise or live in areas of poor health. The concept of Health Walks was started by an Oxfordshire GP, Dr William Bird, for his patients at Sonning Common Health Centre in April 1995.WHI is an initiative of the British Heart Foundation and the Countryside Agency. It benefits from extra funding from the Big Lottery Fund. WHI has helped to create over 350 local health walk schemes and has trained over 20,000 volunteer walk leaders. Since 2000, it is estimated that they have encouraged over a million people to walk more.

- The Therapeutic Landscapes Resource Center is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing information to the public about restorative landscapes, healing gardens, wellness gardens, and other research-based healthcare design.

- Healing gardens : Throughout history gardens have been used to aid in the healing process - from the Japanese Zen Garden to the Monastic Cloister garden. However, with the advances in medical technology in the 20th century, the use of gardens as healing elements began to diminish. Fortunately with the recent interest in complementary and alternative therapies, which emphasizes healing the whole person -- mind, body, and spirit -- rather than simply alleviating symptoms, the interest in garden as healer has been revived.

- www.lach-humor.be (NL) Nature, walking and laughing are healthy. In combination those three must be super healthy. In the forests of Hooghalen, south of the Dutch city of Eindhoven, it is possible to make a walk of 2 hours under supervision of a "Laugh instructor"

- Glasgow homeopathic hospital garden provides information on the healing garden

- The growing together project : The project is a partnership between Parks, Woodlands and Countryside Ranger Service and Sheffield Allotments and Leisure Gardeners Federation and promotes and restores several allotment sites in Sheffield as valuable, sustainable community resources that are well cared for, well used and well managed by involving the local community in composting, recycling and healthy food production.

- the campaign site of Healthy Plants in the Workplace

- Reported impacts of interior plantscaping in office environments in the United states

- Plants for People (E,G, FR) is an international initiative to promote and spread knowledge about health effects of plants in a working environment

- Evergreen :

- Plants in buildings: A web site that provides inspiration and technical advice on all aspects of interior landscaping.