The horticultural therapy project in the photovoltaic greenhouse in via Giustiniano also opens its doors to the Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired. The greenhouse project, managed by the Jolly Italia Cooperative, already hosts psychiatric patients from the Mental Health Department of the ASL of Aprilia, but also local elementary school students and allows them to live an experience in contact with nature and the scents of fruit and aromatic plants. Jolly Italia, active for 25 years, has thus chosen to expand the public of the photovoltaic greenhouse by also inviting the Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired from the Latina section and the Aprilia branch.
«We want to carry out other practical activities with them, such as the lupine harvest, the seedbed and other greenhouse work with plants», they explain from Jolly Italia. “There will be a need to make small changes to the greenhouse, such as including braille signs with plant information.”
About twenty members of the Italian Union of the blind and partially sighted, with their companions, were able to take an initial tour of the garden: «For them it will be a new way of relating to nature, living outdoors to stimulate the other senses, do socializing and practical work. This sensorial garden is a jewel of the city and everyone must be able to experience it, which is why we are opening up to other associative realities”, concludes Jolly Italia.
«We are happy with the start of this project. In the greenhouse we were able to appreciate the aromas and scents of plants that we didn’t even know. Thanks to this initiative we create a network between associations and give blind people, often isolated at home, the opportunity to go out and meet people”, comments Antonio Ferrazza, manager of the Aprilia desk, opened a year ago in the municipal headquarters in Piazza dei Bersaglieri, on Wednesdays from 4pm to 6pm.
«Thanks to this desk we understood that in Aprilia there are many blind people who are alone and don’t know that there is a way to network. The help desk helps them in daily life, offering information on technological aids, bureaucratic advice and emotional support. The desk organizes initiatives to stimulate sociality, such as the exhibition on the tools supplied to the blind, blindness prevention days or days dedicated to writing and reading in Braille”.
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