About

When I discovered horticultural therapy, I knew this was my modality. It named what I had always known intuitively: nature connection can heal.

Years later, when my mom became terminally ill, I moved home to the farm. I planted a large vegetable garden, partly to nourish my grieving family, but also because I needed somewhere to be. That garden gave me a place to sit with my sadness, to grow through it, and to be with the people I loved: my nieces, my siblings, my dad, and the beautiful friends who were our supports through that hard season. Nature held all of it.

That experience, and so many difficult ones since, has reminded me again and again that the natural world is an important element of balance and healing. It is true for me, and for so many people, even those who don't yet know it.

Work Experience

That season of my grief led me back into the work in a deeper way. For nearly seven years I served as Program Coordinator and then Program Manager at a community mental health organization on a working farm in Caledon East. There I worked with a team facilitating social recreation rehabilitation programs that drew on horticulture, farm animals, cooking, nature, art, and music as therapeutic tools. I also managed a social purpose market garden that employed people living with mental health-related barriers to work. It was rich, rewarding, community-connected work, and it shaped how I practice today. 

Since 2013, my work has taken me across a range of settings and populations. My longest and most sustaining contract has been with the Guelph Enabling Garden, where I have had the privilege of working in an accessible public garden with a wide variety of individuals and groups over many years. Alongside that I have delivered programming for older adults through municipal programming, and have brought horticultural therapy into school settings with children and youth. Each context has deepened my understanding of what nature-based work can offer, and who it can reach. 

My Approach

My work is sensory and grounding by nature. My practice draws on the evidence that reminds us that connecting through our senses with the living world's textures, scents, sounds, sights, tastes, and rhythms supports healing in ways that are both measurable and meaningful. 

I hold autonomy as a core value. You will always lead what we're doing and know why, and you will always have the freedom to shape, pause, or redirect our work together. I work collaboratively, which means goals are set together, and the pace is always yours to determine. 

I bring reverence and enthusiasm to this practice for the people I work with, for the plants and places we share, and for the beautiful, persistent way that nature nurtures us back toward ourselves.

I acknowledge that there are many barriers to connecting with nature — physical, geographic, economic, and beyond. I endeavour to work with each person to increase accessibility and remove those barriers where I can. We all have a right to the benefits of nature, in a way that feels right for us. 

My work is grounded in the evidence that community and connection are essential elements of life.

Why "Grounding in Nature"

You may recognize grounding as a mindfulness strategy — the 5-4-3-2-1 technique, where you pause and notice 5 things you can see, 4 you hear, 3 to touch, 2 to smell, and 1 to taste. It's used to help people return to the present moment when they feel overwhelmed or dysregulated.

When that practice is rooted in nature, something more happens. We already know from research that nature reduces stress, and the evidence tends to focus on one sense at a time: the sound of water, the scents of trees, the texture of bark, the sights in a perennial garden. This makes nature the perfect focus of this grounding strategy so my work brings those threads together, layering sensory experience in ways the research suggests are genuinely therapeutic.

But grounding in nature does something else too. Nature spans time and space in a way nothing else does. When we slow down enough to truly notice it we remember that we are not alone. We are connected to all living beings, across all of time. That awareness can bring us into the present moment and gently shrink the urgency of what feels wrong. In nature, we can borrow its strength, its resilience, its capacity to grow through difficulty and loss.

That is what I am here to help people find.

Credentials

• Registered Horticultural Therapist (HTR), Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association — registered since 2012

• Member in good standing, Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association

• Master in Environmental Studies, York University, "Experiential &Therapeutic Education Through Sustainable Agriculture" 2005 

• Honours BA in English, University of Guelph, 2000

• Based in Guelph, Ontario — serving individuals and organizations across the region