List of Therapeutic (Healing) Gardens at VA Facilities

In January of this year, I received a “tipping point” email from a new therapeutic garden advocate friend:   

Hello Annie, I am a senior Landscape Architecture student at the University of Georgia, and I am currently working on my senior project: a therapeutic horse back riding center in Baltimore that is wishing to expand their services to include a Horses for Heroes program.  This program focuses on therapy for veterans.  I am searching for information and/or example of veterans gardens and post traumatic stress.  Marguerite Koepke, my healing gardens professor, pointed me in your direction.  If you have any information or sources, I would really appreciate it. Thanks so much for your help.  – Samantha

You know, one of those emails that says: “Okay, its time.”

Time to make available the story behind and the growing list of therapeutic gardens at VA facilities that I have been collecting since 2005.  As mentioned in a previous post, while wearing my other hat, (Acer Institute LLC), I teamed up with co-conspirators Alee Karpf & Jack Carman to orchestrate a therapeutic garden conference & tour in 2005 at the Miami VA.

From this event came several inquires as to where and what types of “healing gardens” existed for vets and their families.  We didn’t know so we started to ask, and it is not clear how many “boomers” and/or Afghanistan/Iraq war veterans are currently benefiting from existing therapeutic gardens in VA facilities. At the time of organizing the list (2006), we didn’t have specific statistics of how many therapeutic gardens existed in the 154 VA medical centers, the 1300 “sites of care” nor other non-VA facilities serving veterans. However, through the work of this list, VA colleagues and contributors have noted that indeed veterans requiring VA care, are benefiting from these specifically & sensitively designed gardens and the associated programmed clinical activities, should they find such a garden at their VA facility.

•  •  •

So to you Samantha, other therapeutic garden advocates, our veterans and caregivers of veterans, here’s the story, another resource & list so far posted on Acer’s website (read, scroll, subscribe for the list, then click the download button). I share this resource with the hope that it will benefit many and that we will see more therapeutic gardens in VA facilities.  

•  •  •

You might ask, how can therapeutic gardens support the VA healthcare system and buffer the impending strain of services?  We know this for certain, that therapeutic gardens:

• Aid in clinical treatment (horticultural, occupational, recreational therapies) from injury and illness (e.g. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, physical disabilities) 

• Provide a positive distraction from illness and concerns 

• Reduce stress and blood pressure

• Aid in a more seamless transition from wartime duty in a home-like setting

• Normalize the environment; “de-medicalize” the setting, offer more “real life” application for treatment

• Improve mood, function and socialization, increase natural absorption of Vitamin D, and balance circadian rhythms.

•  •  •

Help grow the list.

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.

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?