The healing uses of plants in prisons, hospitals, communities and other locations such as stressful work environments will be discussed at a symposium featuring national and internationally known researchers to be held March 24-27 at the University of California, Davis. Titled "The Healing Dimensions of People-Plant Relations," the public symposium is being organized by UC Davis and the San Francisco Sheriff's Department, and sponsored by the People-Plant Council, American Society of Landscape Architects, UC Davis and Harvard Medical School. Topics include gardening projects for the homeless, community gardens, the development of "sustainable community" landscapes using Davis as an example, horticultural therapy in prisons, use of plant therapy to treat depression, plants' applications in improving indoor air quality and the influence of plants on people's pain tolerance. Symposium participants hail from American universities including Brandeis University, UC Berkeley, Rutgers University and the University of New Mexico; public gardens including the Wichita Botanical Garden and Morton Arboretum in Chicago; and foreign countries including Australia, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Korea. Examples of specific presentations include: • The use of horticultural therapy on jail and prison inmates, with speakers focusing on the impacts of such therapy in San Francisco's jail and in Illinois' Logan Correctional Center, and research into how inmates benefit from gardening and other nature-related experiences. • A Bay Area program that teaches gardening to those who are blind through a four-month session of instruction. The Peninsula Center for the Blind, in Palo Alto, teaches clients in a community garden environment that includes a flower garden and a productive vegetable garden, the produce of which is taken home by the clients or donated to a local food closet. • How to design a healing garden that can be a part of any hospital or health facility. Such gardens, according to current environmental psychology research, may help calm patients, restore hope and encourage healing. Gardening has become the top American recreational activity in recent years, surpassing jogging and bicycling, says Mark Francis, landscape architecture professor at UC Davis and a conference organizer. Francis co-edited "The Meaning of Gardens" and is a co-author of "Public Space." People are interested in gardening these days because "the public life has been changing and there is more of an appetite for nature, and for gardening. With the world out of control around us, the desire to control our own back yards and to personalize our gardens emerges," Francis said. Sam Bass Warner, of Brandeis University, will give the keynote address at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 24, on "The Periodic Rediscoveries of Restorative Gardens: 1100 to the Present" in the Varsity Theater in Davis. The public may attend Warner's lecture without paying the symposium registration fee. Michael Hennessey, San Francisco County Sheriff, will give the opening remarks at 9 a.m. on Friday, March 25, in 2 Wellman Hall. San Francisco County has an ongoing jail gardening program in which inmates learn to garden, and once released from jail, have an opportunity to work in several large gardens providing produce for top San Francisco restaurants, Francis explained. Catherine Sneed, founder and director of the jail gardening program, will speak during the Friday morning session. A mini-tour of the UC Davis campus and arboretum will be given at 12:30 p.m. Saturday, March 26. A tour of Davis as a "sustainable community" will be given at 11 a.m. Sunday, March 27, leaving from the north side of the campus's Memorial Union. The symposium is open to the public; the registration fee is $150, with students admitted for $110.