Gardens that heal from the outside in
A car accident that crushed Karen Muranaka’s spine two years ago and left her a paraplegic threatened to take away one of her favorite pastimes: gardening.
But in Kernan Hospital’s rehabilitation garden in Baltimore, she learned how to plant forsythia and hyacinths from her wheelchair. And in the process, she found new hope.
“I look for it harder now -- the birds, colors, greenness of grass every spring,” says the 46-year-old Eldersburg, Md., resident, who visits Kernan every three months for therapy. “That regrowth gives my body new strength and renews my inner spirit.”
“Healing gardens” such as Kernan’s are flourishing at hospitals, hospices and specialty clinics nationwide.
“We’ve definitely seen the trend grow over the last 10 years or so,” says Catherine Mahan, president of Mahan Rykiel Associates, a Baltimore landscape architecture firm that has designed several healing gardens.
Garden construction, a small part of the $14.9 billion hospitals spent last year on capital projects, is a small investment to make given the intense competition to attract patients, analysts say.
“Marketing is part of it,” says Clare Cooper Marcus, professor emeritus at the Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at UC Berkeley. “But that’s OK if it brings something beneficial to people.”
Those benefits go beyond the aesthetic. A growing body of research shows that people feel better when they see gardens, and there are specific biological responses that account for that sense of well-being.
Roger Ulrich, director of the Center for Health Systems and Design at Texas A&M; University, is a pioneer in research on the restorative effects of gardens.
He and Marcus co-wrote a 1995 study that documented the stress-relieving benefits of hospital gardens. Nearly all of the patients in the study reported a positive change in mood after they sat in the gardens.
“Healing gardens are not magic,” Marcus says. “Multiple senses are engaged, and something about that seems to result in a calming experience so people let anxiety drop away.”
These green spaces, often referred to as healing, restorative or meditation gardens, typically re-create idyllic backyards or rural landscapes, lush with grass, flowers and trees. Some, such as North Arundel Hospital in Glen Burnie, Md., or the Hospice of Baltimore/Gilchrist Center, incorporate water, either with reflective pools or trickling fountains, some stocked with fish.
The gardens can have trees and trellises for shade or winding paths for meandering. Most have benches and private alcoves.
“Sitting there, [patients] remove their thoughts from their selves and instead think about nature,” says Lana Dreyfus, a horticulture therapist with the Chesapeake Chapter of the American Horticultural Therapy Assn. “That becomes the relief -- they are distracted enough by the garden and the beauty to forget about pain.”
Kernan Hospital also has therapeutic gardens, where patients can garden or continue their rehabilitation -- practice using a new walker, for example.
Many of Maryland’s healing gardens -- in hospitals as well as churches and community centers -- have been funded by the TKF Foundation, a private philanthropic group in Annapolis that believes exposure to the outdoors enhances the human condition.
The 19-year-old foundation began focusing solely on sponsoring “sacred outdoor spaces” projects in 1998 and gives several grants of as much as $200,000 each year to create gardens, labyrinths and other outdoor projects, according to Executive Director Mary F. Wyatt.
The foundation also donates a signature bench made from vintage Eastern Shore oak barrels. Waterproof journals, like the one at the new $17-million Tate Cancer Center at North Arundel Hospital, are attached to each bench.
Unsigned entries in the Tate Center journal chronicle the visits of people who have enjoyed the garden. Last July, a woman with two young children wrote that she was finding peace after her mastectomy. A note from a child read: “I hope my grandma is OK. This garden makes me think of heaven.”
As more hospitals embrace complementary and alternative medicine, healing gardens have become more common.
“We are meant to look like a place to retreat,” said chaplain J. Joseph Hart of the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, whose Towson campus is enclosed by an arbor.
During the last two decades, research has shown that views of verdant pastoral scenes, city parks and traditional backyards all help to calm people and reduce stress, says Texas A&M;’s Ulrich. Water, especially flowing water, has also been shown to have a mesmerizing effect.
“Looking at everyday nature is quite effective in quickly promoting recovery from stress,” Ulrich says. Blood pressure drops, respiration slows and muscles relax. Brain activity shifts, indicating relaxation is taking place. Moods brighten, he says.
Landscape architects say that hospital gardens should stimulate all senses and offer a variety of colors and plants that bloom with each season. Plants should rustle in the wind or be fragrant.
Designers know how to customize gardens for specific groups. AIDS and cancer patients, for example, must avoid sun, so they need shaded gardens. Alzheimer’s patients, who become disoriented, fare better in gardens with single, circular paths that have only one entryway.
To chaplain Hart, though, the power of healing gardens defies the rules of design and science.
“Regardless of background, religion, beliefs,” he says, “gardens serve a spiritual purpose. They offer a way to reconnect or to escape the burdens of reality.”
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Sites to explore
To learn more about healing gardens, try these resources:
American Horticultural Therapy Assn.: The organization promotes using horticulture as a therapy technique. www.ahta.org
The Center for Health Design: A California-based research and advocacy group that believes good design makes better healthcare systems. The group sponsored a key study on healing gardens. www.healthdesign.org
Center for Health Systems and Design, Texas A&M; University: Run by Roger Ulrich, a leading researcher on the benefits of natural landscapes. archone.tamu.edu/chsd
