“A new book – intended as a textbook for students in horticultural therapy, social services, design and other disciplines – highlights the therapeutic benefits of onsite gardens in hospitals, and prominently features Legacy’s Gardens in Healthcare program, which includes 12 gardens in its six hospitals. Therapeutic Landscapes, co-written by Clare Cooper Marcus and Naomi A. Sachs, focuses both on what research says about access to gardens in hospitals, and offers advice for landscape architects on how to design gardens for healthcare settings, as well as how to incorporate views of nature.”
A Nature Place, a Healing Garden at Legacy Health in Portland, OR (pictured above), takes shape this winter.
“We’ve been at this 23 years,” said Teresia Hazen, coordinator of the therapeutic gardens and horticultural therapy program for Legacy which…received a $560,000 grant from the TFK Foundation to turn the concrete courtyard at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center into a therapeutic garden, and will participate in a research study to investigate the garden’s effect on three groups of people: nurses from the cardiovascular intensive care unit, pregnant women on the verge of delivery, and families of people staying in the cardiovascular intensive care unit. The study, led by Kathleen Wolf at the University of Washington, will assess whether visits to the garden have a measurable impact on stress levels in those groups. “If it does help, it’s going to be cheap help,” Hazen said. She said the movement to improve healthcare design and incorporate more gardens in healthcare settings was spurred by a 1986 study by Roger Ulrich showing that gall bladder surgery patients who have a view of nature from their hospital room have a faster, less stressful recovery than those who don’t.” Read full article here.
A Nature Place, Legacy Health, Portland OR – plan by Brian E. Bainnson of Quartrefoil, Inc.
