Healing on the Inside: The Benefits of Nature Interactions within Carceral Environments - 1.25 PDH (LA CES/HSW)

Daniel Winterbottom, is principle at Winterbottom Design Inc. and professor of landscape architecture. His work focuses on the creation of therapeutic environments to address inequities and solve complex challenges for those impacted by trauma, mental illness, and displacement. He has worked with marginalized communities domestically and internationally. He has created supportive environments for communities of garbage pickers, in psychiatric hospitals, prisons, war victims and refugees. He co-authored “Healing Gardens” by Timber Press in 2015. In 2021 he received an Urban Sketchers Reportage Grant for 2021 for his project "The Shifting Landscapes of Despair, Hope, Survival and Persistence".

Julie Stevens is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Iowa State University, where she has developed an innovative multi-year partnership with the Iowa Department of Corrections to create therapeutic environments for prisons. The team of Iowa State students, prison staff and incarcerated individuals at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women received an Award of Excellence from the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2015 and 2018. Professor Stevens is currently developing a trauma-informed design program focused on underserved youth in a residential treatment program.

Patti retired in 2019 after 38 years in Corrections. She was warden at the Iowa State Penitentiary at her retirement and prior to that, she was at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women (ICIW) for nearly 20 years. While there, she was a part of the planning, designing, staffing and construction of a total remodel and expansion to make ICIW a reception center and a state of the art facility for women. The final stage of this project was teaming with the Iowa State University to create a new landscaping design for a prison.