THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501270103
SECTION: HOME & GARDEN PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines
WHEN THE ANCIENTS were sick, they walked among trees and plants and breathed the fresh air to soothe their pain.
Then came the discovery of penicillin, chemotherapy, laser beams. High-tech medicine buried the garden under high-rise hospitals with sealed windows.
But now there's a movement afoot to return nature to the lives of patients. It is spurred by an army of landscape architects, horticulture therapists, nurses, environmental psychologists, gardeners and most of all, the patients, families and friends who have found themselves inside dreary hospitals, facing a disease - like cancer, AIDS or Alzheimer's - for which there are no magic bullets.
Throughout history, the idea of providing gardens for patients ``has waxed and waned,'' said Dr. Sam Bass Warner, an urban historian at Brandeis University. ``Wherever medicine has no magic - for AIDS or cancer or mental illness - gardens reappear. When we think science can do it all, they disappear.''
Gardens are popping up in hospitals, hospices and residences for the elderly all over the country. They may be as small as a rooftop terrace in Manhattan or as large as a 60-acre hospital complex in Texarkana, Texas. And though there is no cure for the diseases, the power of plants to heal the spirit is evident.
In Hampton Roads, Sentara Norfolk General Hospital offers ``windowsill gardening'' for its long-term patients who have recently been disabled by strokes, brain injuries or amputation. ``It has a very calming effect on them,'' said Evelyn Hellinger, a Master Gardener and psychologist who volunteers her gardening services to the hospital.
In Vancouver, at a residence with a specially designed garden for Alzheimer's patients, violent incidents declined 19 percent over a two-year period. At three comparable residences with no outdoor space, the rate of violent incidents increased 681 percent.
In an AIDS unit at the Terence Cardinal Cook Health Center in Manhattan, a patient is soothed by the sound of wind chimes outside his window that looks out on the garden. ``I saw a bee seducing a flower out there,'' he says. ``On a windy day, I can hear the chimes. That's what I call unorchestrated music.''
At the new St. Michael Rehabilitation Center on the outskirts of Texarkana, Leta Shelby, who had a hip operation, did her leg exercises in a sunny room that faced a wooded glen full of birds. ``It makes a tremendous difference,'' said Shelby, who had been wheelchair-bound for 20 years with rheumatoid arthritis. ``And I'm walking now, with a walker.''
``I've seen a drastic improvement in patients here,'' said Sister Damian Murphy of St. Michael's. She said the average stay for a rehab patient had been shortened from six weeks to two or three weeks.
In the Sentara Hospital rehabilitation unit program, patients nurture their plants in the recreation room during their stay and take them home when they leave.
``It's not related to their treatment or their illness, but it shows them they can do something when they get home,'' Hellinger said.
Several other hospitals, nursing homes and other long-term treatment centers in South Hampton Roads offer gardening as therapy or have gardens where patients can go to enjoy the flowers and visit with family and friends.
At Windermere Nursing Home in Virginia Beach, for instance, administrators recently turned an unused area into a garden filled with bright flowers, vegetables, a waterfall and fish pond.
``It's a meditation-type garden where patients can sit and reflect,'' said Diane Hess, director of administrative services at Windermere.
In winter, residents enjoy a view of the garden from the ``Florida room. Vegetables from the garden are included in the nursing home's meals, Hess said.
Norfolk's Lake Taylor Hospital, a combination nursing home and long-term care facility, has seven courtyards and a patio filled with plants. In the spring, ducks from the nearby lake nest in the courtyard, said Judy Laster, director of marketing and public relations.
Incorporating plants in healing is as ancient as the Egyptian physicians who prescribed walks in gardens for the mentally disturbed.
But after World War II, with antibiotics and medical technology, fresh air and greenery were nearly forgotten as cures came from petri dishes and radiation machines.
``Today's hospitals look more like office buildings or factories than places of healing,'' Warner said.
``Until it becomes common knowledge that the experience in naturalistic environments is fundamental to psychological wellness, then we cannot make the case for really improving the human condition,'' said Patrick Mooney, who teaches landscape architecture at the University of British Columbia. MEMO: Norfolk free-lance writer Jane Harper contributed to this story.
ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI/Staff
WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED
Master Gardener Evelyn Hellinger tells rehab patients Denise Brown,
center, and Esther Fetty, right, about the aloe vera plant.
Esther Fetty, a rehabilitation patient at Sentara Norfolk General,
enjoys a camellia from her teacher as she pots a jade and other
plants.
by CNB