Natural havens: the cure for stress could be in your own backyard. Gardens measurably reduce tension and discomfort and help restore emotional and physical health

Natural Health, July-August, 2004 by Nancy Stedman

a healing room with a view

Plants and gardens have long been used to help heal the ailing. During the Middle Ages. monasteries "created elaborate gardens to bring pleasant, soothing distraction to the ill," a tradition that was carried into European and American hospitals in the 1800s, according to Roger S. Ulrich, Ph.D., professor of landscape architecture at Texas A&M University. While such designs were scaled back during the industrial efficiencies of the 1900s, a reawakened prioritization of stress relief in health care has led to a renaissance of hospital gardens.

"An important impetus for this awareness," notes Ulrich, "has been the major progress achieved in mind-body medical science. There is limited but growing scientific evidence that viewing gardens cart measurably reduce patient stress and improve health outcomes."

Much of that evidence has come from Ulrich himself. In 1984, his breakthrough study, published in Science, showed that gallbladder surgery patients who saw a landscape outside their window had shorter hospital stays and fewer minor complications, such as headache and nausea, compared with patients who had a view of a brick wall.

In a subsequent study, performed at Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden, Ulrich and his colleagues assigned heart-surgery patients a nature view, an abstract picture or blank scenery. The patients who got to gaze at trees and water had a significant drop in postoperative anxiety and pain; this group was able to transition faster from narcotic drugs to moderate analgesics. Other researchers have found that the presence of nature improved satisfaction and mood among patients, their families and hospital staff as well.

Patients report that gardens provide a positive escape from stress and a greater sense of personal control. This is the reasoning behind horticultural therapy, a more hands-on relationship with plants that has been successfully utilized in the treatment of substance abuse and mental and physical disabilities to enhance self-esteem, alleviate depression, improve motor skills, provide opportunities in problem solving, encourage work adjustment, and improve social interaction and communication.

Control is a crucial element here. According to the American Horticultural Therapy Association, "for many patients whose conditions and treatments have rendered them feeling passive and dependent, having living plants to nurture creates a role reversal. Horticultural therapy places the patient in the care-giving role, and this often engenders confidence and a renewed sense of purpose."

Surrounding at home digging deeper

Healing gardens are mostly associated with health-care institutions, but The Healing Garden by Gay Search and Healing Gardens by Romy Rawlings provide many variations suitable for your home space. For a more academic treatment, try Restorative Gardens: The Healing Landscape by Nancy Gerlach-Spriggs, Richard Enoch Kaufman and Sam Bass Warner Jr.

For an encyclopedic listing of institutional healing gardens in the United States and elsewhere, visit healinglandscapes.org. One of the newer destinations is the Elizabeth and Nona Evans Restorative Garden at the Cleveland Botanical Garden, which can be viewed at dirtworks.us, the Web site of New York landscape designer David Kamp.