Healing gardens

Healing gardens are ways to not only take a patient or person away from the hustle and bustle of daily life and the uncaring concrete.

To a world of their own with Mother Nature abound providing a restful, distressing atmosphere. Some hospitals are now providing a spot for healing gardens for both staff and patients. These havens help rejuvenate both in the stressful situations of modern healthcare.

The Japanese Zen gardens were probably the first example of gardens for healing. Up until their development, gardens were simply a way for the family to produce enough fruits and vegetables to feed them in the summer and sometimes into the winter.

The elements of the healing garden were important to promote inner peace and provide a method of connecting with nature. These gardens of the past provided those who were ill a complementary method of aiding the medical treatment. However, modern technology took over and most patients found themselves in a concrete sterile environment.

Today, alternative and complementary medicine now returns us to the tranquility of nature to improve the process of healing. Much like the Monastic Cloister gardens of the past, the healing garden is a way to work with the entire person, mind, body and spirit. It coordinates with other healing processes to enhance the treatment for the patient so the body can heal itself faster.

Recently, Roger Ulrich from the Center for Health Systems and Design, Texas A & M University, did a study on the effects of a garden in reducing stress, improving positive feelings and blocking negative thoughts or stressful thoughts.

The study showed that the patients that viewed the vegetative areas showed brain waves associated with relaxation compared to those that viewed the concrete of the urban scenes. This relaxation translated into shorter post-operative stays, less pain medication and fewer complications from treatment. In other words, these garden simply makes the patient feel better and invigorates, destresses or relaxes them.

Creating a Healing Garden

The same principals of a traditional garden are important when you want to create a healing garden. You need the garden to be functional and make the best use of the space available. It needs to designed so that maintaining the garden is easy to keep the therapeutic benefits.

It also needs to be both visually pleasing and environmentally sound. If the garden is a place where there will be wheelchairs, then you need to pay attention to path widths and slopes also.

Simplicity is one important part of a healing garden. If you want to remove stress, you certainly don't want an area to be too busy or it will add to the stress level. However, you also need to make certain that there is a variety of different textures and colors in the garden to increase the stimulation to the senses. You also need to make certain that it remains interesting and peaceful throughout all the seasons, not just the spring and summer.

On of the most important factors in any healing garden is balance. The balance can be asymmetrical or symmetrical but it needs to create a stable area. Rather than have small amounts of Lilac ,St Johns Wort and plants like Sambucus scattered, the use of groups or mass planting throughout the garden offer not just focal points but points of orientation for the patients and need to be included in the garden. Along with this, there should be a smooth transition if you have more than area, this is particularly important if you have the garden move from a more private area used for meditation and solitude to a public gathering area.

The garden should blend well with the surroundings. If you have it in the center of high-rise buildings, you'd need trees to bring the garden in scale with the buildings. Next to a house or in a rural setting, large trees are not necessary or may detract from the garden if used extensively.

Plants for the Garden

While there are many types of plants useful for a healing garden, some are far more preferred than others are. Some plants and herbs like Lemon balm , Japanese, Mint herbs Chamomile may have special meaning to the person or groups of people served by the garden. You should include any plants considered sacred or those that bring fond memories of the past.

In many cases, plants such as sunflowers and daisies evoke happy memories for many and should be part of the landscape. The use of particularly bright and aromatic plants are often included in healing gardens for the elderly but can be in any type of healing gardens. These types of plants evoke memories with their smells and colors. Even the way the wind rustles the leaves can evoke the senses and make the garden more pleasant.

There are healing or medicinal plants, which also are beneficial for the garden. For instance, Comfrey ,milk Thistle basil, Sage ,whether it is cinnamon basil, lime, lemon or regular basil has attractive leaves and a highly aromatic fragrance that is good for the soul. The leaves also provide not only a delicious taste to culinary dishes but are antiseptic and medicinal.

These plants are also good for the garden as companion plants to many other types of vegetables and fruits. Basil also is an effective treatment for irritated skin and you simply have to rub it on to reduce the itch of a bug bite.

Other healing herbs that can be interspersed in a garden are lavender, marjoram or oregano, peppermint, rosemary, lemon balm and thyme.It also of importants to include plant like artichokes to give a good mix in the garden. If you want a particularly interesting ferny plant as a background plant that has a strong licorice scent, consider using fennel. Fennel is a soft furry looking fern-like plant in the spring. You can almost pet it because of this but also include the leaves in a salad. By the mid summer, it begins to look more dill-like but gives an aromatic scent when rubbed. In the fall, you can use the seed and bulb for food or spice.

Watch out for toxic plants when you create your healing garden. Use plants that attract wild life also. There is nothing more relaxing than watching bumblebees and humming birds visiting garden plants. These gentle creatures remind us all that we are part of a larger creation where even the smallest of creatures play an important role.

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@2010-2011 Infomation on this site is not to be used as medical or trained professional advice.

SBI!