Virginia Tech Students, Programs Win Horticultural Therapy Association Awards

BLACKSBURG, Oct. 2, 2002 The American Horticultural Therapy Association presented awards Saturday to a Virginia Tech professor and a graduate student, to the Virginia Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners program from James City County/Williamsburg, and a scholarship to a Virginia Tech graduate student.

The awards were presented during the association's meeting at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens Sept. 28.

An award recognizing important new publications was presented to Mary Predny, a former employee in the university's Office of Environmental Horticulture, and to Paula Diane Relf, a Virginia Tech professor of horticulture. The award was presented for publication for a series of three articles concerning horticultural therapy.

Predny, of Park Forest, Ill., earned her bachelor's degree in 1996 from the University of Tennessee, and earned a master's degree in horticulture therapy at Virginia Tech in 1999. Relf, a leader in the field of horticulture therapy, has been a Virginia Tech faculty member and an extension specialist in horticulture since 1976. The articles allow for better follow-up by others in their area of research, and led to subsequent research in the Adult Day Service Center on the Virginia Tech campus.

The Virginia Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners program in James City County/Williamsburg received the association's John Walker Community Service Award recognizing its work in horticulture therapy.

Master Gardeners are trained to address the needs of their local area through sustainable landscape management and related horticultural activities. Formed in 1988, the Master Gardeners of James City County, has also done work with youth, water management in the landscape, and formed a committee to address the identified community needs in psycho-social health and well-being through horticulture.

Additionally, the group has developed a three-year program in which it helps assisted-living facilities to develop self-sustaining independent horticulture programs. The system gradually reduces the responsibility of the Master Gardeners so the facility is eventually fully responsible for its program. The Master Gardeners have worked at four different facilities in their community.

In another award, Virginia Tech graduate Christina Gigliotti received the Anne Lane Mavromatis Scholarship. Gigliotti, a native of Virginia Beach, earned two bachelor's degrees from Virginia Tech, in human development and in horticulture with the horticultural therapy option. She is pursuing a master's degree in adult development and a certificate in gerontology at Virginia Tech. In addition she has attended two past AHTA conferences and been a co-presenter of ten papers at professional conferences.

Gigliotti received the scholarship in recognition of her academic achievements and for the promise she offers for future contributions to the field of horticultural therapy.