It’s Green Gym, but not as we know it: examining the historical roots of voluntary sector provision of social prescribing focusing on gardening on prescription in the UK

Research Aims: This article investigates the historical roots of green prescriptions, which are a form of social prescribing. It seeks to establish when and why they began to be used in Britain to inform practice in the present.

Context: Social prescriptions are a broad range of interventions for patients for whom standard medical treatments may not be effective. Many social prescription programmes are delivered by charities in partnership with the National Health Service. ‘Green prescriptions’ are a subset of these interventions, and the term now refers specifically to environmental and nature-based interventions such as forest bathing and gardening.

Methodology and sources: The article uses the historical method and brings together a range of primary sources (including digitised newspaper articles, medical journals, and medical handbooks) to examine the use of horticulture as part of medical regimes in Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Findings: Academic research on green prescriptions tends to locate the history of nature-based health interventions in either the ancient world or in non-Western medical traditions. However, the use of horticulture as therapy is better situated in its use in medical institutions from the late-eighteenth century onward. Though recast as medical therapy, horticultural activities for patients often began as a cost-saving measure. Focusing on tuberculosis sanatoria, the article draws analogies between the institutional use of horticulture as therapy and green prescriptions to provide a critical framework for understanding modern social prescription programmes.