Benefits of Memory Gardens at Nursing Homes

Comic Relief

Poetry: The Earth is Made of Jello

Landscapes for Strength: Hope Gardens at Cancer Centers

Bonner Healing Garden: A Place of Solidarity at Life’s Threshold, Therapeutic Landscapes Network Guest Post by Chris Garcia

In Memory of the Healing Garden Part 4 of 4: Supportive Conditions

In Memory of the Healing Garden Part 3 of 4: Positive Distractions

In Memory of the Healing Garden Part 2 of 4: Sensory Elements

In Memory of the Healing Garden Part 1 of 4: Access to Nature

Magnolia Courtyard Garden

Magnolia Design Diary Entries:

Would you please add Pansies, Blue Hibiscus, Purple Cone Flower, Black Eyed Susans, and Garden Geraniums. Thank you for your efforts. - EH

Please would you add more trees and less cement and some herbs and tomatoes - BH, Age 9

You could also add maybe a little pond or fountain Please.

Lots of Shade! For people who can't handle sun. Thanks.

Magnolia Special Care Center, El Cajon, CA

Somerset "Flower Meadow"

Somerset Special Care Center, El Cajon, CA

A Garden for the Ages

Sunny Place of Stockton, Stockton, CA

The Friends of Bonner Healing Garden

Sunday, July 28, 2008

A poem in the chapel notebook says, “Even the rock – solid and secure – will come to this place and weep.” I walk out of the rustic tabernacle and sit on a warm stone bench near the center of the garden. I stare up at the towering old growth pines and cottonwoods that once marked the Brown House property and now define the parameters of Bonner Healing Garden and Hospice. At some distance across from me, a large concrete wall with a totemic wooden eagle at the top releases a torrent of water onto several boulders. An echo chamber behind the waterfall distorts my sense of distance with its sonorous pitch. The water flows out of a raised pool and streams down a rocky creek bed that directs the flow under a bridge and into a calm pool of river pebbles.

In the distance, I notice a boisterous group of women walking together up the long entry. The path inevitably forks but the seven women stay together under the solidarity of friendship as they stroll through the rose garden and arrive at the waterfall. One of the friends says, “This garden is amazing,” in a fascinated tone that speaks for the sentiment of the group. Then, directed by wonderment, they begin to quietly disband and individually observe the garden sanctuary in a natural and effortless reaction.

One of the friends walks from behind the chapel and passes the stone bench where I sit. I inform her that there is a bald eagle on a cottonwood branch at the end of the teahouse. She excitedly tells her companions as they regroup in front of the rose arbor. While the excited group streams under the stone archway of the teahouse, Mary walks back to my rustic bench. She peers down at my drawing and surprisingly asks me if I am a landscape architect. Her husband just finished a sensory garden in her home state of Virginia. She excitedly directs me to the teahouse enclave to meet the rest of the group.

Under the pitched roof and through the shade of the cottonwoods, the calm and shimmering waters of Sand Creek direct our attention. From the height of the creek bank on which the concrete teahouse is perched, the water looks close enough to touch. I point to the branch that the bald eagle inhabits. Standing there for at least the duration of my first hour in the garden, the creature is as stiff in the flutter of leaves as the boulders that sit beneath the garden waterfall. The friends point in amazement and take pictures.

The seven friends are sorority sisters from Montana State on their annual ten-year reunion. For some of the sisters, the gathering is the first in twenty years, since dispersing after college. They found out about the garden in a local article and decided to visit it while touring the Lake Ponderey Area, where one of the sisters now resides. Coincidentally, half of the sisters are therapists, including a burn, occupational, and grief therapist.

Mary, the grief therapist, tells me that she uses flowers and outdoor settings to conduct breathing and emotionally supportive exercises with clients who cope with death and abuse. Mary lost her father and son within a two-week span. “Helping others in their time of grief and pain helps us to cope with our own grief and in that way we are united in understanding and healing,” she exclaims.

Her friend, the burn therapist, tells me that she has to give me a hug because I am a miracle in myself. We embrace for over 30 seconds in a free flow of emotion bonded by pain and hope. The last person I hugged that way was the person who gave me life, during a time when I was on the edge of losing her. The tears begin to stream and the flow moves us all.

After an hour of pouring out our experiences, human emotion unites us in a solid circle of kinship. My companions and I hug individually and say our good-byes. My friends walk together in the distance, through one leg of the fork, back down the long entry path. I sit back down at the warm stone bench staring blurredly at the sonorous waterfall in a state of wonderment.

Paw

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

I call my grandpa but still no answer from his room. Several months have passed and my sister and I are worried. We locate the senior home number and talk to a caretaker. My grandpa’s dementia continues to worsen and my step-grandma passed-away a month ago. It is nine o’clock at night and I drive to a grassy hill overlooking the town lights, a personal sanctuary during times of hardship. It is too late this time. Headlights envelop me and two officers from the nearby ranger station tell me I must leave. They understand I am grieving but I have to do it somewhere else.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

I visit my grandpa at the senior home. I have a surprise for him; an old galvanized bucket from my backyard with two pictures applied to the finish. One picture shows my grandpa gleefully hoisting me up to look at a monster truck. The other is a view of my water garden, the origin of the corkscrew willow and lemon-scented stonecrop planted in the bucket. We clasp the handle and lift the display onto a raised bed outside the facility. He cannot smell the lemon-scent but he points his finger in recognition of our picture. He touches the gravel surface inside the pot and notices a seashell, lifting it to his ear. I tell my grandpa that I’ll be thinking of him while I’m away. We retreat from the one-hundred degree sun, back inside through the windowless door.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Healing Garden Journey Begins...

Growing-Up

Emotional responses can powerfully transform the personal meaning of a garden. Many years ago, a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed park ranger received the birthday gift of his dreams. The young ranger embraced his mom with vivacious excitement and planted the hefty gift in a dry corner of the backyard. With his mom’s help, a weekend’s effort conceived a beautiful “park-like” water garden.

Years passed, and the young ranger now foresaw a future in botany. The amateur botanist’s enthusiasm for water plants and wildlife bloomed into a horticultural hobby. The water garden embodied his interests and helped a timid adolescent express himself.

Then, the spirit who encouraged his passion received a phone call concerning “test results.” Hope and sustenance suddenly throbbed with the pulse of monthly treatments and tests that determined the “status” of the affliction.

The young man spent timeless hours in the water garden, submerged in a meandrous stream of thought. The hollow walls of home creaked with distress but the farthest corner of the backyard, a place of life that he and his mom nurtured into existence, evolved with his confluent emotions. The garden transformed into his guilt of escape, sanctuary of hope, niche for helplessness, and personal reminder of his mom’s love and indelible spirit.

One morning, the young man awoke and looked through the back window. His mom stood at the corner of the backyard with her hands clasped behind her back, looking down into pond’s placid reflection. Even though he could not hear his nurturer’s thoughts, he listened as their unspeakable fear, love, and hope echoed from a water garden imbued with the dreams of years past and the promises of tomorrow.

Purpose

Visits to over two-dozen outdoor spaces at healthcare facilities across the country inspire this journal. These posts share the experiences that continue to guide my design career and motivate me to grow as a person.