Extension of “healing garden” – could all the world be?

Would love to see this film “The Healing Gardens of New York“, alas I am here and not there.  Should you go, do share.  

The Healing Gardens of New York tells the stories of the lives and communities transformed by gardens and green spaces created in response to crime, neglect, poverty and urban decay. This wonderful film illustrates the significance of gardens and green spaces in the face of ever growing urbanization and development. In cities dominated by glass and concrete, the film takes an in depth look at how gardens can be a platform for social change and an opportunity to develop new skills and transform lives.

For those of us not able to make it, the synopsis is quite lovely, confirming, inspiring.  People/Plant solutions for social and environmental problems.

Master Gardener Monday – week 3: What’s in your house?

“Eco” = house

“logy” = study of

Ecology is the study of environment and relations of organisms to each other and their surroundings.

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As a restorative / healing garden designer, I receive deep  joy as I help homeowners and residents restore, maintain, enhance their emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being — their house, I suppose you might say. The MG course allows me to provide information that fortifies the physical house of clients’ gardens. I care deeply for my clients’ well-being as well as the cause and effect of my design service on my clients’ respective communities.  So this week’s MG class was right on time. 

Organic Management Techniques:  ”restore, maintain, enhance ecological harmony”. 

For what we do and how we “care” for our gardens does not end at the property lines nor the edge of garden beds. Potions and lotions leach, blow, move, carry, spread. Wrong plant, wrong place invites trouble.  No soul to your soil means no life to your landscape. Now, may seem obvious to you - ’cause we all want harmony, right? - but check this out.

Despite the news of the National Gardening Association conducted the Environmental Lawn & Garden Survey which found that 

• 5% of America’s 90 million households gardened using exclusively organic management techniques;
• an additional 31% reported to be hybrid gardeners (practicing some sort of organic management approach);
• and numbers of both were expected to double in coming years,

we have this:

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 100 million pounds of active ingredient from herbicides, insecticides, miticides, and fungicides were applied in homes and gardens in the United States in 2001. Of that, homeowners used 13 percent of total herbicides, 16 percent of total insecticides and miticides, and 16 percent of total fungicides…  Applications of pesticides by professional applicators (e.g. commercial lawn services) are not included in the numbers outlined above and if included would, no doubt, raise these numbers significantly.

How is this stuff stored, applied, used, disposed of in your house?  

No, not rant on never using chemicals in the landscape. Rather learn to manage your house’s health, with an eye (body, brain, respiratory system,… you get it) to our collective well-being through the principles of Integrative Pest Management, baby.  Simply, a wake up call to express compassion for the collective house.

 

Master Gardener Monday – week 2: What’s buzzin’ in your garden?

Okay, I think there is something suspicious going on here… Week 1 of Master Gardener (MG) training, we met Chip Bubl.  Week 2, we are ed-u-ma-cated  in “garden pests and not-so garden pests” (basic entomology) with insect expert/inspec-tor Jean Natter.  Then we roll around in Soils, Compost and Fertilizers with “Dr. Dirt” Claudia Groth.

Come on… In my MG initiation, will I experience a metamorphosis into some sort of plant-landscape-gardening name?  Nah, but a nickname might be nice.  

Mrs. Natter insects: What's buzzin' in your garden?

Our time spent buzzing around entomology-land with Ms. Natter provided this:  in our Portland Metro area, less than 1% of insects are considered serious pests. So hold your fire with those various chemical potions & lotions.  Let’s talk management techniques people.  

First: right plant, right place, right care (that’s why the service of landscape designers is so valuable – we help you with the “nature puzzle”.)

Second: not all bugs are bad (some are needed and quite necessary); not all bees are bees (some are flies that look like bees); and a “grub”, well that’s a teenager beetle. 

Third: Insects are important to life and thrive-ability of your garden; they are critical to your enjoyment, satisfaction and health. Yep. 

Lastly:  Insects are kinda interesting, once you get over the gag reflex and all. 

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Flummoxed by a perceived intruder? Don’t know what has taken up residence in your garden nor what type of neighbor that six- or eight-legged creature may be? Ms. Natter says, ” a lot of plant/pest problems lie in the root systems,” and really, spiders don’t hurt plants, though the rolling of leaves does annoy at times, I know.  

Understanding insect life cycles, anatomy, classification and the common orders of insects helps MGs diagnosis your problems so that we can help you know when and what is the best intervention for management. If you’ve got a bug that’s bugging you, capture it (alive, please), contain it (and any associated plant material it may have been eating or living on) and bring it into your local MG extension office. Resources likely consulted in the MG insect CSI work:  Insects (a Peterson Field Guide) & Pacific Northwest Insect Management Handbook, among others. If you want to get all buggy with Ms Natter, you can have a live listen at a MG talk or seminar. She brings her bugs with.

Ms. Topher Delaney, thanks

 

Topher Delaney, Carolyn S. Stolman Healing Garden, Acer Institute Tour 2007

Curls my toes, yes it does.  Don’t know how many times I have watched this 25 min.* online video - late at night, middle of a design project for a jolt, starting my day.  Perhaps you will indulge in the scenes of heartful craftswomanship; giggle at the sometimes animal shelter sometimes design studio; engage in the masterful extraction of the term “healing garden”; or simply wonder how we get from one place to another in our respective journeys.  Delicate balance. Delicious, delicate balance of art, care, stewardship, persistence of an artist’s truth.  Where do the words fall for you?

Oh yes, the video features a sampling of Topher Delaney’s Healing Gardens (or her term, “sanctuary gardens”).  Gives this possibilitarian and imagineer food for thought and a way to appreciate her more than the Acer therapeutic garden tour interlude in 2007 (picture above).

Take from it what you will.  For me: be more clear about what you do, where it comes from, and why you do it.

*Feels like to long?  Tuck it in your back pocket for that day when you need a little refueling.

On making clients laugh

 

pic courtesy of landscape contractor, Jim Pranger, Teufel Special Services

Me as a lilac tree.  

Why pose as a lilac tree?  It made her laugh.

(And I do do other plant impersonations as well.)

And so the work of Remembrance & healing gardens goes… we talk design layout & style, next maybe about irrigation, next we decide what-tree-would-you-be-in-this-spot, and then… quietly, the painful loss that prompts the planting of that tree & the design of that garden.   In this work, my God this work, my clients and I share so much.  We deal with hard things, and thankfully, oh God thankfully, we enjoy funny things.  The medium of a garden makes it so easy.  

Humbled lilac, am I. 

Syntax static: healing, hospital, therapeutic gardens

 

SFGH welcome banner during Acer Institute ASLA tour of San Francisco Therapeutic Gardens, 2007

Sometimes I feel like I am trapped in a game of telephone and I can’t get out.  Did you say healing garden? Therapeutic garden?  Hospital garden? Operator, there is static on the line.  

Hospital gardens are increasingly termed “healing gardens” (HG). Near daily Google Alerts cross my screen for every Tom, Dick and Harry hospital “Healing Garden” being unveiled, constructed, donated to, value engineered out, and so on. Glance back at those two words next to one another:  hospital and healing. Has HG become another trendy term on the marketing carnival ride along side “sustainable” or “green”? 

Hospital healing garden remains redundant based on presumptions that:

a) we as a civil society would only create hospital landscapes that support well-being (I hear the cynics giggling.);

and

b) we, as stewards of the natural environment (e.g., landscape architects / designers) do our jobs ethically and correctly. We apply evidenced-informed design principles which manifest landscapes that foster health / well-being.  Nothing more, nothing less.

What constitutes (e.g., forms, causes, compels, makes) the difference between

healing gardens, hospital gardens, and therapeutic gardens?  

Syntax?  

Something more dynamic, more soulful, more sustained?  

Master Gardener Monday #1: Plant-based solutions for social problems

Sustainable Gardening: Oregon-Washington Master Gardener Handbook

Was a pleasure to be greeted by similarly-minded, pink-vested, recycling devoted, deliriously happy Clackamas County chapter Master Gardeners – all buzzing around like happy, little bees, welcoming the “new-bees”.   

Given the (over) abundance of info shared (note the girth of the Sustainable Gardening binder received on week 1), five factoids that may tickle your fancy:

1. There are 3000+ Master Gardeners (MG) in Oregon.  This best kept, grassroots (oh, pardon the pun) secret provides over 31,000 volunteer hours on behalf of the Oregon State University Extension Service.  The result is enough volunteer man/woman power to equal what 15 full time employees would do for OSU. This is a well-oiled, massive, complex, outrageously helpful outreach machine. 

2.  More than one-third of all Oregonians seek advice/help from the OSU Extension Service. 

3.  The MG course is not some “grow better tomatoes” info-session (though I do anticipate learning about tomatoes). And more on the tie between tomatoes, civility, social relationships and our food shed in a later post.

4. MG program’s mission: help us greenies (again, can help but pun) fulfill a critical role on the education delivery train: understand, digest, apply, teach, find & share the current research coming out of OSU (accredited land-grant university) related to gardens, plant/people relations, ecology and health.

5. The origin of “green thumb”, shared by Chip Bubl: pinching off plants (at right place, right time) to spark growth. Consider me pinched. 

How lovely to plunge into a huge pool of information, surrounded by passionate people, chanting the same mantra: promote plant-based solutions for social problems.  Gardens (when designed sensitively) are practical and purposeful in affecting change.  Gardens grow hope, offer social support, positive distractions. When times (or food sources) are uncertain, change comes fast, and stress is high, gardens offer a sense of control – curtsey to the great minds in therapeutic garden design research and supportive design theory.  

–

Promoting wellness and enhancing life through gardens, large and small, is an exciting job. 

—

Week 2 – what they didn’t teach you in landscape architecture school: basic botany, entomology, soils and compost – yah, all that and a bag of chips in one eight hour day.

Master Gardener Monday, a prelude

 

my garden feeds me

Like many, long have I wished to spread my wings where gardening acumen was concerned. To move from designing space to being informed about the spaces I design (Ode to Thomas Church’s Gardens Are For People). What landscape architect / designer / artist wouldn’t, right? And who doesn’t love school? So, continuing with the Red Bird Design (RBD) 2009 theme (Hope Springs Eternal = HSE), I made a deliberate attempt to figure out  how, where, and most importantly, when. Thus OSU Home Horticulture Extension program:  Metro Master Gardener Program. Hip, hip hooray – I was accepted!  Jazzed about receiving that Sustainable Gardening Handbook too!  Imagine what this will do for my own “restorative landscape”, for the micro-climate of my immediate community, and for my Red Bird Design clients? Imagine what this will do in my conversations with landscape contractors! Move over bacon.   

Desperately seeking master gardening enlightenment? You are in luck, OSU offers a variety of choices to grow in gardening know-how. And yep, they hold true to research evidenced from therapeutic gardens - we need choices; we crave choice in our natural and built environments – for empowerment and a sense of control. For me, I selected the Metro program given most RBD clients take me to the tri-country areas (not all – shout out to Yamhill and Marion County folks). However, other options are abundant. Interested enthusiasts might check out the Salem area (Marion County) resource. Or perhaps you’ve got a day job and need this fancy pants option of “virtual learning” (new online program, talk with Terron.  He’s nice.). 

Best of all, I dig the “give back” component:  service back to the community in the form of a 66-hour internship.  Helping the peoples – yah, always the social servant. 

Class begins on Friday, so look for Master Gardener Mondays on the RBD blog – I’ll share the nitty gritty, down-in-the-dirt tidbits with you.  (Subscribe to this blog through the little RSS feed at the top of the window. If you are a blog newbie, similar to moi, I promise it doesn’t hurt.)

Here comes a lean, green, compassionate, gardening machine.  Reap what you sow, you dig?

in the garden of life Hope Springs Eternal

Happy New Year!  

Red Bird Design is flying in for a wondrous year ahead! 

Moment of necessary distraction - anyone home?

Hear me, hear me, the Red Bird Design theme for 2009 is “Hope Springs Eternal!” Let’s break it on down now, shall we? (Full credits & props to A. Pope for original meaning.)

Hope:  noun – a feeling that something desirable is likely to, will or possibly happen [bloom]; to likely bring success or relief [repair] ; a feeling of trust [safety]*

Springs:  verb — to move rapidly upward or forward in a single movement or in a series of rapid movements [grow]; a time of new growth and regeneration [restorative]; a source of water that flows out of the ground as a small stream or pool [life force]*

Eternal:  noun – something that exists everlastingly* 

Nothing better than practicing (and learning) this in the landscapes of our lives. Tweet me on Twitter, post a comment on this blog, friend me on Facebook and share how this garden metaphor might springs you.  How will your “garden” grow?

Giddily this theme foreshadows great surprises (some known and some unknown) in my work and service of healing gardens in the year ahead.  Come find this theme in action at my upcoming restorative garden display at the Spring Home and Garden Show in Portland, Oregon.  Check back on details as this little red bird finds her unique way of sharing healing garden goodness for our collective well-being.  Nature is the great equalizer! 

*Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.