Restorative Gardens: The Healing Landscape

Restorative gardens for the sick, which were a vital part of the healing process from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, provided ordered settings in which patients could begin to heal, both physically and mentally. In this book, a landscape architect, a physician and a historian examine the history and role of restorative gardens to show why it is important to again integrate nature into the institutional - and largely factorylike - settings of modern health care facilities. The authors present the history of restorative gardens and studies six American health care centers that cherish the role of their gardens in the therapeutic process. These institutions are examined in detail: community hospitals in Wasau, Wisconisn, and Monterey, California; a full-care mental institution in Philadelphia; a nursing home in Queens; a facility for rehabilitative medicine in New York City; and a hospice in Houston. In their comprehensive review the authors suggest that contemporary scientific understanding clearly recognizes the beneficial physiological effects of garden environments on patients' well-being. The book ends with a plea to make gardens - rather than the shopping mall atria so often seen in newly renovated hospitals - a vital part of the medical milieu.