Wish trees at Yoko Ono's The Broad exhibition

 

There is this on-going Yoko Ono's exhibition at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, and though Yoko is not one of my favorite artists, I thought it would be interesting to go and see it. 

I really liked the black and white pictures from other artists that took photos of Yoko in action. Another interesting activity was to see people hanging wishes labels to the trees next to the museum. 

From Wikipedia, he's a brief explanation of what it's all about:

Wish Tree is an ongoing art installation series by Japanese artist Yoko Ono, started in 1996, in which a tree native to a site is planted under her direction. Viewers are usually invited to tie a written wish to the tree except during the winter months when a tree can be more vulnerable. Locations of the piece have included New York City, St. Louis, Detroit, Wish Tree for Washington, DC, San Francisco, Pasadena, and Palo Alto, California, Tokyo, Venice, Paris, Dublin, London, Exeter, England, Finland and Buenos Aires, Argentina, Calgary. 

Her 1996 Wish Piece had the following instructions: Make a wish. Write it down on a piece of paper. Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree. Ask your friends to do the same. Keep wishing. Until the branches are covered with wishes.

All pictures by Myriam Mahiques, May 2026. Pls do not share without my permission.

Water Garden in Tochigi

 
Photo by Iwan Baan

Today I am sharing a landscape design from 2018, a beautiful water garden in Tochigi, Japan. 

I see it as a fractal garden design with healing, calming, characteristics. Each reflection, similar and different at the same time. There is not a single detail to miss here.

From Arquitectura Viva: 

The idea that architecture is a form of nature has become a maxim that the firm Junya Ishigami + Associates faithfully follows in its work, an oeuvre now enriched by the Botanical Garden Art Biotop: Water Garden in Tochigi, Japan. The singularity of this project lies in all the recycling it involves: on the one hand, Ishigami has reused hundreds of trees that were supposed to be felled altogether, and on the other, he understood that taking advantage of an existing irrigation system would be the best way to create the watery soil on which a new kind of natural environment that has much to do with architecture would be able to thrive.

Photo by 9 Monkeys (Google)

Photo by O Kaneko (Google)

From DesignBoom:

‘the primary objective of this project was to create a new form of nature as an extension of nature as we now know it; the future of nature through the eyes of man. the site was originally heavily wooded before it was cleared for rice fields. later, it became meadowlands. by maximizing the environmental potential of this land, we will create a new landscape that fuses ‘density’ and ‘relationship’ which do not coexist in nature.’ says junya ishigami to designboom.

Photo by Tao Tao (Google)

Photo by Yaziret E B (Google)

Forest Bathing and Forest Therapy

 

The Ficus Forest at the Fullerton Arboretum. Photo by Myriam Mahiques, personal archives. 2021

I love walking in forests, it is so calming.... Apart from concentrating on photography, I enjoy the smells and the textures, feeling the sound and textures of leaves below my feet. 

I have attended an online conference a few days ago promoted by Japan House in Los Angeles:

Forest Therapy: Reconnecting with Nature via Shinrinyoku

Guest speakers were Dr Iwao Uehara and Forest Therapy Guide Ben Page. From the introduction:

"During the pandemic, restrictions have kept many people indoors and masked when outdoors. Now that more people in the US are feeling safe in outdoor spaces and are breathing fresh air without a mask again, there is a sense of reconnecting with nature, its beauty and its healing qualities. In order to maintain physical, mental and emotional balance as they re-enter “normal.” life, many Americans are looking for new ways to connect with nature.

 Healing through close contact with nature is at the core of the Japanese concept of “Shinrinyoku” or “Forest Bathing,” a term coined in the 1980s by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries to encourage citizens to take walks in the forests. Japanese researchers have discovered many positive physiological effects of walking in nature, including lower heart rate and blood pressure, strengthened immune systems and a reduction in depression. 

 Professor Iwao Uehara, who founded the practice of Shinrin-ryōhō, or “Forest Therapy,” in which the health of the forests is also considered, and Ben Page, a local expert in forest bathing, will discuss the philosophy and benefits of forest bathing and forest therapy in Japan and worldwide."

From my notes on the conference:

"Forest bathing" (1982) is like bathing in the sea, but we are surrounded by the forest instead. How it feels, it depends on the person and the forest the person selects.

"Forest therapy (1999): the difference is a group of people is guided, usually to meditate, to heal, to interact with nature. There are activities involved to improve the forest, like (for example) clearing  of overgrown plants and planting of species. 

Some goals of Forest Therapy: rehabilitation of patients with dementia, avoid stress, avoid suicides, discover the local environment, improve people's relationships, counseling for depression.

The practice has to be done in natural environments without human intervention, not in gardens with trees planted by humans. It is not the same to walk around the neighborhood. 

Ben Page explained Forest Therapy is being implemented in USA, but it is a Western interpretation of the Japanese therapy. He mentioned an interesting comparison between cultures:

While Westerns say "we have to conquer the mountain", Japanese say "we have to be friends with the mountain".

Forest Therapy is preventive, not a curative discipline. It is to improve the wellbeing. 

A nurse relaxing in a beech forest. Photo posted by Japan House illustrating the conference.

There is much more to read and I leave a few links here:

Getting back to nature: how forest bathing can make us feel better.

Forest Bathing is great for your health. 

The practice of Forest Therapy

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.

Some Concepts on Healing Landscapes Design

 

Since mid 1990 there has been an emphasis in the approach of healing gardens / landscape design. Whoever has spent long hours waiting in the hallways of a hospital, or working, or as a patient, knows how stressful it could be. The proposed improvements were destined to buildings and the overall environment, including the outdoors. Current researches prove what we knew intuitively, that  human connection with nature helps in our healing process: even the observation of a tiny flower, a colorful dry leaf, or of a spider web with beautiful raindrops, distracts us from everyday problems!. In SXXI therapeutic gardens designers began working with health professionals, recovered patients and their families' advices. Words like "Ecotherapy", "Terrapsychology", "Ecopsychology", "Green Exercise", "Biophilia", are common terms now. There are so many variables in design, that simulated nature was used for researchers to reduce the possible outcomes. And then the question arises, if simulated nature is still good and less expensive than landscape art (posters, murals, TV screens), why real nature is needed? Just for combined sensory experience.

I have watched professor emeritus Reuben Rainey's conference on YouTube about his experience and work in healing spaces in healthcare facilities. The conference was part of the Spring 2019 SA+P Lecture Series, University of Virginia.

I found it very interesting, though the noise in the background is annoying. This post is a summary of my notes together with some key screen shots images. 

The professor shows a Healthcare facility of people with dementia. He reminds us that the landscape and hardscape is not only destined to the patients' relax but to the families and medical-nurses staff as well. It is important that patients are in contact with nature, able to touch and smell. So the design is highly tactile and multisensorial, with transition spaces (see the trellis above) for activities and veggie gardens.

Seating elements must be provided, though it is not specific what type, I personally prefer movable, so I can sit wherever I want, shadow, sunlight, twilight..... unless the seating is along a path. The edges are transparent so patients are able to see around and have more points of reference to avoid confusions.

The picture below is showing a floor plan, with the trellis in the center as a transition space, the landscape is extended around and there is a closed circuit for wheelchairs which guides the patients to come back. Professor Rainey comments designers should be careful with the budget. The construction of the hardscape-landscape could be a 20% of the overall budget of a facility but he says the extra amount usually turns back in two years.

The picture below shows a tall brick wall with an adjacent planter. He mentions one learns from its own mistakes. The adjacent planter allowed a tall patient to jump over the wall and land on the street. 

The last part of the conference is dedicated to cancer patients. Here is a project with lots of glass in the corridors where the landscape can be seen through the tall windows. Natural light has healing power. 

Cancer patients need to be in quietude. Absorbing sound materials are recommended. When chemo is underground, he proposes murals of landscapes (see photo below). He mentions it has been nice to see some people distract themselves looking for their own houses. 

Apart from natural light, absorbing materials, glass and murals, he has incorporated "funny" paintings from a local artist to create a sense of familiarity. He says people find them very attractive to the point of being stolen :)

Each cow has its own name. People take pictures of them.

Professor Rainey says that more natural elements as symbolism had been added, but people fail to understand the theory and associate with memories. For example, stones and the beach. Stones are also used for calmness and meditation.

The view of the street is helpful for distraction as well. We can see proposed open terraces in the picture below. Trees are conforming edges. 

In the picture above we see how landscape integrates with the spaces indoor.

The overall idea for Healthcare landscape- hardscape design is to stimulate inspiration and enthusiasm for life. It is a good idea to include flowers and colors.