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.

What of therapeutic gardens & veterans healthcare facilities?

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.