Author(s)

KADRI MAIKOV

Abstract

The Nordplus project ‘Healing Greenery’ has been promoting the concept of Green Care since 2018, bringing together BSc and MSc students and lecturers from across the Baltic countries and Finland. Representing fields such as landscape architecture, social work, agronomy, medicine and business technology, the participants collaborate across disciplines to design healing environments. Also, the iWater Summer School (iWSS) study shows that planning studios can meet modern educational demands for multidisciplinary, research-oriented and intensive learning. In landscape architecture, implementing Nature-based Solutions – Ecological Driven Design (EDD) and Green Experience Laboratory (GE-Lab) in public and private green spaces, a multidisciplinary approach has been used. The goal is to evaluate students’ learning outcomes, Green Care experience, experiential design in healing landscapes and evolving experiences with and suitability of interdisciplinary, international teamwork as a learning method. The following course topics were used in different years: In 2021 development of kindergarten life and green environment (26 participants); in 2022 community gardens, urban gardening and public parks as green tools for social cohesion (22 participants); in 2023 educational services (19 participants); and in 2024 green therapy principles for different age groups (23 participants). Written essay feedback analyses are conducted using NotebookLM text functions. Landscape design feedback increased in years 2021 (20%) and 2023 (25%), surprisingly with Green Care. Social work students contributed more to universal design and greenery. International teamwork was a valuable experience while balancing challenges like language barriers, different perspectives with benefits like compromise, social skills. Green Care’s role in well-being was highlighted in all years as following: 2021 (75%), 2022 (65%), 2023 (80%) and 2024 (70%) while emphasizing nature as a learning tool. Landscape architecture is evolving into an interdisciplinary field where design integrates technology and health related issues, requiring collaboration with social scientists, health experts and others to create design for healing environments.

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