At the Topsoil Garden we are dedicated to creating a transformative nature-based therapy experience. Our vision is to establish a serene garden space where individuals can receive compassionate care from well-being practitioners and engage with a supportive community that shares in the spirit of the gift. Topsoil was borne out of the understanding that traditional therapy spaces weren’t built with everyone in mind. We’re hoping to fix this.
We are driven by a mission to revolutionize healthcare through a natural and meaningful approach. By reconnecting individuals with nature and fostering a sense of community, Topsoil aims to provide high-quality, innovative, and person-centered services. Our focus is on creating a nurturing environment within the community, where individuals with disabilities and/or lived experience of mental ill health can thrive alongside their dedicated support workers and volunteers.
While our website is currently under development, we appreciate your patience as we continue to grow and develop. Join us on this journey as we strive to make a positive impact and promote well-being through the healing power of nature and community support.
In today's healthcare landscape, support and clinical care often occur in isolation from a person's local community. However, at Topsoil, we believe that care should be a collective effort, rooted in the strength of the village. We are committed to revolutionising healthcare by empowering communities to deliver compassionate, ethical, and regenerative care through a transformative approach. Our model recognises the fundamental human needs, including our deep connection with the natural world. We value the innate healing potential within all beings, which can only be accessed when in harmony with sacred spaces.
Why Therapeutic Horticulture?
People’s interactions with plants and soil, through goal-orientated horticultural activities in the form of active gardening, as well as the passive appreciation of nature could be therapeutic to people with mental disorders in many ways. Activities can be modified and adapted to suit the needs and individualised goals of those participating, as well as a collectivist approach to unify the group. It has been well documented that horticulture-based therapy programs meet the required balance of physical, mental, spiritual and social needs of a human. As well as more granular benefits such as increased gross and fine motor skills, faster recovery times from acute mental illness, and indirect, non-threatening relationship building. Therapeutic Horticulture can also apply to vocational skill-building, as well as the solidifying of food security. Two especially important topics in marginalised communities.
This model cannot be possible without the spirit of the Gift.
“To inhabit more fully the spirit of Gift is to transform life within us and around us. It is a journey of trust, an exploration of synchronicity, a recalibrating of boundaries, a step into community, a discovery of purpose, and an invitation to friendship with the world”
Charles Eisenstien
More about the origins of Topsoil Garden Project below
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF COUNTRY
We acknowledge and respect the traditional custodians whose ancestral lands The Topsoil Garden and The Scenic Hotel are built upon, the Kaurna and Peramangk people. We recognise their people’s cultural, spiritual, physical and emotional connection with their land. We honour and pay respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.
We also pay respect to and acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from other parts of South Australia and Australia and their connection to Country.
This country has a special story, being the Adelaide foothills, we bridge two worlds, two cultures and two very different ecosystems. In connection with Kaurna/ Narrunga elder Jack Buckskin, we have discovered that the place in which Topsoil Falls was a meeting ground, hunting ground and place of great connection between the Kaurna and Peramangk peoples. We acknowledge how special this place is to our traditional brothers and sisters and only wish to highlight its significance as a place of healing.