Notes from Nature as Healer: The Role of Gardens in Health Care Facilities

 

Joel Schnaper Memorial Garden at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Hospital, NYC.

Picture shared from Dirtworks.us. Click on the link to see the garden's gallery.

I have been watching another conference by professor Reuben Rainey, Ph D, on YouTube. It is about Nature as Healer: The Role of Gardens in Health Care Facilities, 2013. 

I regret to say the lighting and sound is not good but I am very interesting on the overall design ideas. So, I took some spare notes as follows:

.- Healing must be not only physical but psychological and emotional as well. The intention of healing gardens design is to release stress on the immune system.

.- There are music therapy programs for patients. Music is not noise, which is a stressor.

.- Curved paths seem to be more interesting, because patients stroll or walk discovering different situations, which is different from a long-far point of view perspective.

.- Example of healing garden is Joel Schnaper's Memorial Garden at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Hospital, in NYC for patients with AIDS. Depending on the advance of the disease, there are different degrees of light-shadow. There must not be bumps for wheel chairs. Chairs can be located to assist to musical concerts.

Virginia Commonwealth University Cancer Center garden. Photo shared from

Massey Cancer Center

.- It is recommended not to have scented plants and flowers for cancer patients, due to nausea. Example: the Virginia Commonwealth University Cancer Center Garden.

.- It has been proved that hospital patients that are able to look at a garden through a window need less pain killers and recover faster than others facing a wall. But this experience or test cannot be quantified precisely. It is a strong fundament, a "circumstantial evidence" and one has to continue to test it, via FMRI scanning and digitally tested. Note: I think he may have implicitly referred to virtual reality?

.- Dementia garden: it has to be fenced, but the fences must be transparent, almost invisible, to avoid feelings of claustrophobia. 

.- Porches are added for socializing. A flag for veterans to raise it. Birds feeders, flowers, activities gardens. Strolling paths with no choice, they must orient the patient back to the building. Lighting in porches is helpful with people with cataracts, to adjust the eyes to the interior-exterior transition.

.- The architectural style must be familiar, traditional, not eccentric, recognizable by patients.

.- There must be multi sensual dimensions, spaces for meditation: grasses that people can touch while walking along the pathways, birds singing.

.- Benches are located to face the landscape and not the building.

.- The garden is open to allow staff surveillance. The gardens are good for staff as well.

Oregon Burn Center. Photo credit: Clare Cooper Marcus

Oregon Burn Center Therapy Garden. Birds Houses from To Make You Smile.

.- Professor Rainey gave special attention to the Oregon Burn Center. The gardens have to address sun sensitivity for ALL ages. Pavilions are shaded with different degrees of light.

.- It may take months to rebuild the body. Patients have the chance to sit quietly and look at the plants.

.- At the entrance there is a canopy to modulate the light, because the patients cannot face the light directly.

.- The finished floor has very thin joints. Chairs are movable to allow the possibility of relocation. Canopies-trellis have been added to provide shadow.

.- There is a fountain with calming sounds and lush planting around.

.- There is a children's garden as well, with humorous details, like the birds houses we see above. Most interesting is the addition of a children's house which is a fire house indeed. That is the psychologists' idea to help the children deal with their trauma related to fire.