GLENDALE : Garden Plot Helps Patients to Grow

Build it and they will come. Plant them and they will grow.

These were the two messages Melinda Villarreal of the Glendale Adventist Medical Center delivered to both hospital administrators and her patients whenever she was asked about the feasibility of using a vegetable garden as psychological therapy.

As the director of the hospital’s new Partial Hospitalization Program, Villarreal is pledged to helping her chronically disturbed and temporarily depressed patients assimilate into the community.

Upon accepting her current position three years ago, she immediately pitched the idea of a garden as a means to instill self-esteem and daily responsibility in her patients.

While her supervisors supported the idea, there never was any room or money to implement it.

Three years later, the hospital started reconfiguring its parking lot and Villarreal asked administrators to set aside a small plot of land for the gardening project.

With the land, two 4-by-6-foot plots of dirt, Villarreal immediately introduced her patients to the concept of gardening. But problems introduced themselves from the start.

“You mean we have to get in there and dig?” some patients asked when presented with the prospect of tilling the soil before planting the seeds.

“They didn’t like it at all at first, but it took about five minutes to convince them it would be fun,” said Villarreal. “Before then, I’d never planted a seed before in my life. So I was just as new to the process as they were.”

Walking by an abundance of vegetables and spices that were soon growing, Administrative Director of Behavioral Medicine Services Patricia Prouty spotted 12 stalks of corn swaying in the middle of the parking lot and suggested that Villarreal call the garden “The Field of Dreams.”

“And it truly was one,” recalled Villarreal. “We picked a few ears of corn to see what they tasted like and they were as sweet as sugar.”