School of Karst Science, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang 550001, China
Email: hitomitongpo@163.com (L.J.H.); lixuelian789@163.com (L.X.L.); dfj521@gznu.edu.cn (D.F.J.)
*Corresponding author
Manuscript received December 12, 2024; accepted June 7, 2025; published July 25, 2025.
Abstract—Evidences have shown that healing gardens and gardening are playing an important role in increasing communication between sick children and nature, improving cognitive abilities and promoting psychological recovery. Total 35 records were identified in this paper and we discussed the children, gardens and activities, it should be help us better understand what garden and gardening can do for children. This paper aims at giving an overview of research covering two aspects of gardens and children namely garden usage and gardening activities experiments. We explored the areas of research by 1) integrating the studies of related children’ needs; 2) synthesizing the role of gardens settings (garden usage); and 3) assessing the specific impact of gardening experiment. We suggest that future research could focus on the issue of garden design and corresponding activities to promote social support and care for children with special needs.
Keywords—healing garden, activities, gardening, children with special needs
Cite: Li Jiahong, Li Xuelian, and Du Fangjuan, "What Can 'Garden' Do for Children: A Systematic Review of the Literature," International Journal of Engineering and Technology, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 163-168, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (
CC BY 4.0). 
