Logic and Practice of Empowering the Silver Economy through University Students’Horticultural Therapy Entrepreneurship from an Interdisciplinary Perspective

The deepening of population aging in China has driven the silver economy to evolve into a composite model integrating health, experience, and social interaction, while a significant gap remains in meeting the elderly population’s multidimensional needs across physiological, psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions. The therapeutic value of horticultural therapy, combined with the resource integration advantages of interdisciplinary entrepreneurship among university students, provides an innovative pathway for empowering the silver economy. Anchored in the strategy of active aging, this study employs survey methods and multi-model comparative analysis to systematically construct a three-dimensional empowerment model encompassing “needs–mechanism–pathway.” It analyzes the contextual applicability and implementation outcomes of four core empowerment mechanisms of horticultural therapy, explores the progressive logic of two representative entrepreneurial models—community-embedded “healing gardens” and the B2B model of “horticultural therapy plus elderly care institutions”—and verifies their multidimensional empowerment effects in health, consumption, and industry domains.The study finds that the multifaceted needs of the silver-haired population serve as the logical starting point for entrepreneurial empowerment, with the enabling mechanism of horticultural therapy functioning as the technological core. The three-tiered value transformation pathway of university students facilitates the closed-loop conversion of therapeutic value into economic value. The two models correspond to different stages of entrepreneurship, forming a progressive development pattern that ultimately achieves the integration of social and economic benefits. The theoretical framework and practical model constructed in this study provide significant references for revitalizing the silver economy, expanding entrepreneurial pathways for university students, and advancing the practice of active aging.