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Patients, Staff & Families Find Comfort in Healing Garden
By James W. Varni, Ph.D., Sandra Whitehouse, M.S., Paul S. Kurtin, M.D., & Blair Sadler

For thousands of years, we have been discussing the benefits that people can derive from plants and contact with nature. As early as the Middle Ages, hospitals within monasteries utilized the garden cloister as a place of healing. Patient rooms typically bordered courtyards that offered sunlight, a lawn, seasonal plants, and places to sit or walk.

Lately, there has been renewed interest in the healing environment as we have increasingly come to believe that the hospital environment can affect the mood, stress level, and well-being of patients and their families.

Several years ago, we planned and built The Leichtag Family Healing Garden at Children's Hospital and Health Center in San Diego as a healing environment for patients, families, and staff. We thought that it could help reduce stress, restore hope and energy, and increase consumer satisfaction. Has it done this? We did some surveys and interviews of people who had used the garden to find out.

The majority of people surveyed endorsed going to the healing garden to get away from stress, relax and rest, or in some way improve their mood. Ninety percent felt that they had a positive change in mood after visiting the garden -- including feeling more relaxed, less stressed, more content, more refreshed, rejuvenated, more positive, and able to think and cope better.

In the interviews following the surveys, people shared more of their perceptions of the garden. For example, one father said, "This is a better place to wait than the waiting room, we couldn't stand being in there, wondering if she'd make it. This is quiet and peaceful, the greenery, the colorful flowers, the sound of the water."

A mother who still comes back to visit the garden periodically described how it helped her, "My son was only in the hospital for 17 hours and then he died. Later there was a memorial service here for the children who have died, for their parents. The memorial service was beautiful, very meaningful. It was a way to share our grief with others and it was healing. My son and I had really bonded when we were outside so I think it was especially meaningful for me to be outside in a memorial for him."

Our staff also reported coming to the garden, "We had something really stressful happen just prior to coming here, and we came here to debrief," said one. "It's a good setting to get away from the hospital stress, to feel more peaceful," said another. Parents expressed similar feelings. The mother of one pediatric patient observed, "The feel of the wind, the noises, just being outside. She becomes more alert. It's so important for her to have a place like this to be outside."

The responses to our survey and interviews also revealed that the garden increased the overall satisfaction of the families and staff. One mother explained, "We have been to a lot of hospitals over the last three years. None of them have anything like this; maybe at best they had a chapel indoors. This is much better, like a non-denominational approach to healing. It makes difference. If the hospital takes this care, at this level, then it makes me think there would be an emphasis on preventative medicine at all levels, which is a very good thing."

Comments like these make us believe that our garden is a meaningful experience for many of the families and staff members who have used it, and suggest that it does have a significant positive impact. Because we want to continuously improve the healing environment at Children's Hospital, we are incorporating family and staff feedback into new renovations, and using these findings to inform the building of other healing spaces at the hospital.

Dr. Varni, Ms. Whitehouse, and Dr. Kurtin are work at the Center for Child Health Outcomes at Children's Hospital and Health Center in San Diego. Mr. Sadler is the hospital's president and CEO. Dr. Varni can be reached at jvarni@chsd.org.