Therapeutic Horticulture That Builds Real Strength

Your “gym” doesn’t need mirrors, machines, or a monthly bill. Sometimes it looks like a wheelbarrow, a shovel, and a stretch of uneven ground that forces you to pay attention. From our nonprofit Gardens of Hope in Perris, California, I share how therapeutic horticulture turns outdoor work into real functional fitness and real mental health support, especially when you need a path back to strength.

I also get personal about recovery after stage four squamous cell carcinoma and the lingering side effects of chemotherapy. Weakness, neuropathy, dizziness, and chemo fog can make your body feel unfamiliar. The garden gives me a way to rebuild coordination, endurance, and confidence through purposeful work. You can scale the intensity up or down, track your progress in what you’ve built, and get that honest endorphin lift that comes from sustained effort.

We break down three “heavy lifting” therapeutic horticulture activities we use all the time: pushing a loaded wheelbarrow uphill for full-body strength and cardio, digging and moving sand with different shovels for grip and back strength, and lifting and hauling logs using smart techniques like levers and dollies. Along the way, I talk safety, joint awareness, hydration, and how to avoid pushing past the point where training becomes injury.

If you’ve been searching for gardening for mental health, nature therapy, or strength training that doesn’t feel like a chore, this is a practical starting point. Subscribe for more Healthy Living Podcast conversations, share this with a friend who needs a nudge to move again, and leave a review with your favorite way to turn outdoor work into recovery.

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Welcome To Therapeutic Horticulture

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Well, hello and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and today I want to talk a little bit about therapeutic horticulture and in particular three activities that we do a lot out here at Gardens of Hope. So, for those of you who know or don't know, I run a nonprofit called Gardens of Hope. We're out in Paris, California. It's a two and a half acre botanical garden, a small farm, nature preserve sort of place. And we do all sorts of activities, including special needs programs, mental health programs, we do retreats of all types, we do workshops, classes, every kind of healthful activity you can think of. And we offer what we call therapeutic horticulture. And it's a real simple concept. The idea is that being out in nature is healthy. Okay. We kind of assume that. Even in Japan, they have a concept called forest bathing, and a doctor might even prescribe that to you. So just simply the act of being outside in nature is good for you. But doing things in nature, working with the land, working with plants, working with animals, working with the earth itself has particular values. And I talk a lot, I guess not a lot, but I speak fairly regularly about these different topics. For those of you who are aware, I recently overcame a really bad case of the cancer, and it was stage four

Cancer Recovery And Rebuilding Strength

SPEAKER_00 2:06

squamous cell carcinoma, and it was very likely gonna take me out. But I turned it around, and one of the many pieces of the puzzle was some chemotherapy. And if you're interested in learning about the whole process, I've done probably 30 or 40 episodes that talk about my journey titled Overcoming Cancer and Other Obstacles. Also, probably 20 or so episodes featuring Dr. Robert Hoffman. We get into a lot of the specifics. So one of the side effects from the cancer, I mean, sorry, from the chemotherapy, there's a few of them that I'm still reckoning with. And one, you know, it beats you up, you get weak, you lose weight. So that's a thing. Two, you get what they call chemo fog or chemo brain, you get disoriented, you have problems with memory, lack of coordination, neuropathy, my hands and feet. So I've had some fairly debilitating side effects that I'm working on still to this day. And it was only April that I was diagnosed complete remission. But as I'm recording this now, it's the beginning of August. So it's been a few months, and I get a little better all the time. But one of the things that I'm really working on is my strength and my tone. And one of the reasons why is because you know, the cancer, one of the things it loves to do is come back. And if you have ever, hopefully you haven't and never will, but if you have had to battle cancer or know anybody who has, one of the components of this is it attacks your strength, it feeds off of you. So just the cancer alone can deplete you dramatically. And most of the therapies involved also have an effect that way. So if you can have yourself as strong as you can be going into it, you've got a whole lot more likelihood of surviving both the cancer and the treatments. So I'm preparing myself for the worst. I don't think it's gonna happen. I'm doing a lot of things to keep it from happening. In fact, I'm getting ready to start a whole nother program that I'll be talking about. But strength training is really important to me. I just turned 60 and you know, a lot of people start to wane at this point. I have no intention of doing that. I don't go to a gym. I never have. I call the garden my gym. So one of the elements of therapeutic horticulture are what I call the heavy lifting programs. So I'm gonna talk about three activities that we that I do a lot in the garden. And sometimes our volunteers will come out, and I will always say, well, you know, whatever place you are, or whatever it is that you need, there's some activity in the garden that can give it to you. Anything from just sitting and getting some meditation all the way to some real heavy lifting. So that's what we're gonna get into. First activity I call pushing a heavy wheelbarrow uphill. So the property that we have has a stream

Wheelbarrow Work As Full-Body Training

SPEAKER_00 6:02

on it, and it has it's a three-dimensional property. So the top of the property is got the high point, the front of the property where you enter. The house is at the highest point of the whole property. And then the west side of the property slopes downward to a stream bed that's about two-thirds, almost three-quarters of the way to the back of the property. Property is a rectangle, and so from the west to the east, or sorry, from the east to the west, I apologize, I got it backwards. From the east to the west, three-quarters of the property is before the stream, and a quarter of the of the property is west of the stream. And it slopes downward all the way to the stream, which is the lowest point. And then on the west side of that, it doesn't go up nearly as high, it's a little bit. But we have what's called a Hugo culture, which is a mound garden, and it's the high point of the west side. I'm talking a lot of things that if you haven't been here, probably won't make much sense, but just creating a point on the map. So a lot of what I do on the property is I take sand out of the stream bed, and my goal is to keep water year-round. We have a water table that runs pretty high to the surface, and there's an underground stream that kind of goes uh probably about a third of the property under the ground. So if you dig down maybe 10 feet or so, you're gonna hit water, which is great. But about five years ago, I put some Gambusia or mosquito fish into the stream. At the time, I dug a pond as well, so now I'm pulling sand and mud out of the pond. And part of why I did it was to keep the bugs down because whenever you have water, of course, you're prone to have mosquitoes, and these little mosquito fish eat the mosquito larvae. So they keep the place pretty mosquito-free. It's definitely not a problem. We have maybe a fly problem once in a while, but definitely not a mosquito problem. But once I put those fish in, when the water goes down, I have to keep digging, otherwise, the fish will die, and I don't want that. So I've kind of created my own incentive. I made a commitment that I'll keep those fish alive, and I keep digging. So what happens is you get down, like right now in August, where the water table is down at its lowest, and I'll get down into there with my mud boots on and sling that sand up as high as I can. But you have to keep moving it, creating a place to toss the sand, otherwise, it just keeps falling back into the creek bed. So I toss it up and out, then I gotta haul it off, and I usually end up taking it to the kind of the highest place. We got a butterfly garden that I'm putting sand up in, and it's part of our composting system. I I put sand across into the composting material, and it it adds minerals and stuff to the finished product. I put it up into the hoog culture, we put it in pathways, I mix it into my mortar for uh doing rock work. Um, there's a lot of places that we have a bunch of open areas that have sand, like our retreat area where we do put our teepee up and we do ceremony and things like that. A few areas that you could just walk barefoot, and that's a whole therapy in itself. So moving a lot of sand in the wheelbarrow in the activity. So let's just talk about what that does for you. And the one good thing about this is you can control how heavy the wheelbarrow is. So, you know, if you're kind of tired, you don't have to fill it up all the way. If you're feeling perky, you can fill it up as high as you want. You can make it pretty darn heavy if you want, and you can push it all the way to the top of the hill or go to a lower spot. So you really have a lot of flexibility with how you operate, just like going to a gym, working on a machine where you can set the you know, the weights at certain levels or the uh tension on things, whatever. So let's talk about what you get from pushing a wheelbarrow up a hill. The first is going to be strength training, obviously, and it it engages the muscles from the legs, the arms, the back, the core, quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, calf muscles, biceps, triceps, shoulders, stabilize, and so you it's a pretty darn full-body workout. Depending on how you push the wheelbarrow, you can work on certain muscles. You can walk with your toes, you can walk flat-footed, you can push with your with your arms, you can push with your chest, you can push with your legs. You know, there's a lot of different ways you can you can work it out. So, what do you get from that? Well, obviously, you can get muscle fatigue. So, you know, you pay attention to what you're doing. You don't want to get hurt, just like any weight training, but you can push yourself past the point of good response. You get a good cardio workout, you increase your heart rate, you get more oxygen to your muscles, you get it, it's as good like any cardio workout, but it also gives you strength workouts. So it's kind of cool. You really get your heart rate up, you get your, especially if you're doing it, you know, on a good warm day, you get a good sweat going, get your increased breathing rate because as you're pushing this thing forward, you know, you got to breathe more. It's almost like running without the strain on your knees from running, and so it can improve lung capacity and all the things that are oxygen related, so it's super good. Obviously, you're gonna get a caloric burn, you know, you're gonna burn calories. And when you're working your legs and your glutes that way, you're working your big muscles, so I'm in your chest and your arms. So, really, you're getting a good calorie burn. I know when I when I push that wheelbarrow around, I I burn through a lot of energy pretty quickly. Also, can boost your resting metabolic rate as your muscle mass increases and your fitness improves. This can be part of a metabolism program. You gotta be mindful of the impact on your joints. So if you do this smart, you can strengthen your joints. And again, depending on how you hold that wheelbarrow, how you push it, how you control it, how heavy it is, and all those things will affect the impact on your joints. So, you know, you've got muscles, you've got connective tissues, you got joints, all of these things are affected by this kind of activity. But you can definitely work on strengthening your joints, getting better hand strength, and all of these, your knees can improve. You know, I I've damaged my knee pretty badly, and that's one of the tells is can I push that wheelbarrow without hurting my knees? And that's kind of my thermometer or barometer of how healthy my knees are at any given time. It's good, great stability work. So in my situation, I lost some. I lost some coordination. I got dizzy easily, I got clumsy from the chemo, and I would trip easily. Luckily, I I haven't fallen and taken any any hits, but definitely I have pushing that wheelbarrow forces you to be mindful, it forces you to gain your skill. Otherwise, you dump the wheelbarrow. It's pretty simple. With every physical activity, there's a mental effect. This is the kind of work that doesn't just happen like once. Like, you know, if you're doing heavy weightlifting, you might only do some quick sets and you're done. No, you can do this for a while. And so when you're pushing this thing, especially up a hill, ultimately you start releasing endorphins, and that helps to reduce stress, helps you to really get a better mood. So that's one of the reasons why you know people do workouts, is for the mental aspect of it. It also enhances mental clarity and it gives you a good dopamine hit because when you look back and see what you did, it really gives you that feeling of accomplishment. So that's good. Just remember if you're gonna be doing this kind of thing, you know, stretch, be mindful of how heavy you're loading that wheelbarrow. Start light, go heavier, and just pay attention to your muscles. So another activity that's directly related to this, obviously, is gonna be digging and moving sand with a shovel. And if anybody knows me, it's like a shovel's kind of an extension of my physical being. I always digging,

Shoveling Sand For Strength And Focus

SPEAKER_00 17:31

and it's one of those things that it's one of those things that really gives me some joy. Even when I was going through the worst of my treatment for the cancer and the chemo, I literally had a chemo pump on me, and I was down in my pond moving slowly, doing the best I could, but going down there carefully and tossing mud out of the pond so that the fish would have water. And it just makes me feel better. I feel like I'm connecting with the earth. I feel I feel like I'm helping, making things better. I I just me and the shovel, I've literally worn shovels out. If you look and come to my place, you'll see that I got brand new shovels, and I got some that are worn down to nubs. And you think to yourself, how the hell did that happen? And turns out sand's pretty abrasive, and our soil has a lot of sand in it. So not saying it's gonna happen fast, but and you work with the shovel in this kind of soil for long enough, it slowly wears it down. So, what do you get from moving sand with the shovel? It's a little different than pushing the wheelbarrow. The shovels vary in size from really small, what we call a floral shovel. I use that down in the bottom of the creek because I can take a smaller shovel and toss it really far up and out, and not be such a strain, and I can get more soil up and out easier. I use various widths of trenching shovels. I use digging spades, I use flat shovels, all kinds of different shovels. And the difference is gonna be how deeply you're gonna dig, how easily you're gonna get through, you know, uh around and through rocks, and of course, how heavy of a load you're gonna toss, and it's a pretty big spectrum, you know, from a little floral shovel toss might be just a pound or two to a good scoop of a flat shovel, you might have six or seven pounds, maybe even more. And you're tossing it. So it's a it's a it's it's quite an effort, and there's no limit to how far you can toss it. So you can, no matter how strong you get, you can continue to push. That's a really great attribute to this particular exercise. So obviously you're gonna build strength. Your legs, quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, calves are all gonna be used for squatting and lifting up the shovel, stabilizing the body. Your back, this is a great exercise for your back. I know I've gained a lot of back strength from that, from twisting around and and you know, tossing one side, tossing the other side. Obviously, your arms and shoulders, your deltoids, biceps, triceps, forearms. I've really built my forearms pretty strong. Hand strength, you know, it's it's all excuse me, it's it's all a very controllable exercise. And you can push as hard or as light, you can really focus on certain muscle groups, depending on how you hold the shovel, how you're tossing it, it's really kind of awesome. Um, once again, you gotta watch out for fatigue and and you know, getting dehydrated and heat stroke and all that good stuff. But similar to the pushing the wheelbarrow, it raises your heart rate and helps a good cardio workout. You're gonna get a good sweat going, build oxygen, burn calories, all a lot of those same things increase your boosting your resting metabolic rate. Same thing with joints. It can put some stress on the joints, so you can get strength, you can really get good at balance and coordination because you're moving around in in different terrain, you're not just standing on a flat surface. So you gotta position yourself, you gotta reach yourself sometimes, extending in certain places. Obviously, you gotta watch for strains because you can tweak your back by tossing things wrong, and there's a thrust in motion. So if you do it wrong, you know you can you can hurt yourself. Great mental workout, too, because you got to stay focused and coordinated because otherwise you whack your shovel, you drop a load, you throw it to the wrong place. So many things you can mess up. You get also the same sort of stress relief, endorphin release. Just you end up feeling really good afterward. You get tired. So I think. Digging in the sand can be one of the best exercises that there are because you literally can work just about any muscle in your body the way that you set out to. And feels good. Just feels really good. Here's another one that I've been doing lately. So we have a Temascal, a sweat lodge, and we use a lot of logs. We burn a lot of logs. And we also use logs as ornaments, build little walls, little structures, put barricades up along the neighbor's fence

Lifting Logs With Technique And Care

SPEAKER_00 23:39

so we don't have to see each other, hear each other so much. Tables, benches, chairs, logs, logs, logs. So I go on to social media marketplaces looking for free wood near me. And I whenever I can find it, I get it. And sometimes you get really big logs, and sometimes you get small logs, but sometimes it's fresh and wet and heavy, sometimes it's old and dry and light. But more often than not, you're getting good heavy logs, and they come in a variety of sizes. Sometimes they're really big. Today I moved some logs that were bigger than I thought I could lift, but you end up learning how to work with what you have: a big dolly, working with other logs as levers and fulcrums and things like that. So once again, really it's weight lifting. So you're gonna work on your muscular system, all the large muscle groups, legs, back, shoulders, arms. You're gonna you're gonna give them a good work workout, just like lifting weights. But the difference is you lift weights, you put them down up, and you put them back down. You put them up, you put them back down. With the logs, I'm picking up logs from somebody else's place, loading them onto my truck and bringing them home. And then using them. We'll get into log splitting maybe another time, but that's another piece of this. Works your back tremendously. So your erector spinae and your lattice latissimus dorsi are really important when you're lifting, especially the good heavy logs. You got to be careful how you're lifting them. Just like, you know, doing a deadlift or or you know, some of the power lifting moves, you've got to be very careful in how you do it. You know, obviously your arms and shoulders, your biceps, triceps, deltoids, forearms are gonna be used extremely. Your gripping hand strength is gonna be great. Once again, you're gonna get a good cardio workout, all those values. Logs can really improve your endurance as well because you're gonna pretty quickly you could take yourself to the breaking point, you know, where your muscles, you know, give out. And so you can really build endurance and strength at the same time. Same deal, just like lifting heavy weights, you get a greater oxygen demand. So you're increasing your oxygen flow, burning a lot of calories, great on your metabolism, your joint, same deal. Balance and coordination once again. When you get a really big log and you want to try to get it up onto a truck, what I generally do is I will take a log that I know I can pick up and put it in front of the truck, the tailgate, and then I'll use it as a step, and I'll take the log that's maybe too heavy to pick up, but roll it up to that step and roll it up on you, balance it. I lifted up some logs today that were, I don't know, probably one and a half my body weight, and was able to get them up onto the truck using these sort of techniques. And it's not so much just about brute strength, but you gotta think it through. You gotta you gotta have a focused mind, you gotta be able to have some hand-eyed coordination, and all of these things make it just a really great exercise. The logs especially require, you know, a focus and a cognitive element. So I'm working on my chemofog with that because you got to think where where's it gonna go? How am I gonna get it up there? I'm gonna I'm gonna rotate this. Sometimes I use a big dolly, sometimes wheelbarrows, just different things. But it's a lot of problem solving, so it's great. Once again, you get endorphin release, physical exertion, all the benefits from that. Gotta be careful. Again, when you're lifting heavy things, you can injure yourself. And you know, you go backwards pretty quick if that happens. But frankly, you know, if you treat it like a regular workout, warming up, eat your energy foods, hydrate yourself. These three activities can be powerful therapeutic horticulture activities. I highly recommend them. And if you ever get out to the Paris way, look up the Gardens of Hope. Come on out, take a tour. Love to give get you involved

Safety Basics And Gardens Of Hope Invite

SPEAKER_00 28:58

in our workout program. So that's pretty much my thoughts on the subject right now. This has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine. I want to thank all of our listeners for making the show possible. And we will see you next time.