Since Red Bird Design’s parent company (a collaboratory called Acer Institute LLC) facilitated the Acer/ASLA/Miami VA event in 2005 with Design for Generations LLC, many inquiries have poured in from allied professionals (Horticultural, Occupational, Recreational Therapists, etc.) and advocates seeking help to create therapeutic gardens for Veterans – a most brilliant, cost-effective intervention closing the gap in services and dealing with a current and anticipated preponderance of need. Check back this week, Acer will publish a growing list of therapeutic gardens at VA facilities.
How and where do therapeutic gardens and their associated therapies fit into the VA system? What of the “exterior resources” at VA facilities? There are “grounds” for a variety of services (recreational and physical rehab, talk therapy, etc.) in these untapped landscapes — they are potential venues of care. With minor alterations, these barren landscapes will become gardens of health, recovery, respite, hope for our older vets, our current vets and the new vets (not to mention families). In these “healing gardens” vets and military families find more “real and home-like settings” to help with the transition “home”.
Studies have demonstrated that a sensitively designed garden offers a “demedicalized” environment and provides clients/patients/residents a more comfortable and less stressful place to “be”. In short, when less stressed, better results are noted in “recovery” (Ulrich, 1984; Barnes, 1994). When designed by those who are trained in the “collaborative therapeutic landscapes design approach” teaming with clinical staff, care givers and patients themselves, a therapeutic (healing) garden offers a more “real life” recovery situation because it is a garden, e.g., various “real life” surfaces to practice walking across with one’s new prosthetic device (leg, foot, etc.); surgery or stroke strength gain recovery by reaching/grasping/holding to pick tomatoes, hand water a plant, or pull a weed; orientation to time, place, situation, season through the use of plants for those experiencing mental health issues. As Chief Psychologist Dr. Francis S. Gilbert of the VA Southern Oregon Rehabilitation Center & Clinics puts it, “In terms of therapy, this is the sort of activity that fulfills body, mind and spirit. It involves the actual work of keeping the garden up and there is a spiritual connection here from working in the ground and raising something.”
Miami VA Hope Garden sign makes clear the purpose. Photo credit: Jack Carman, Design for Generations LLC.
Ah, what a difference a garden makes.
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