Patients welcome healing garden

[cougarnurse]

Anyone have something like this? POWAY: Patients welcome healing garden : North County Times - Californian 04-21-2009

Hoping to harness the therapeutic qualities of a popular backyard pastime, officials with Palomar Pomerado Health unveiled a garden Monday at one of its skilled nursing facilities where patients can cultivate their own seedlings and once again enjoy a relaxing hobby.

The first seeds were planted by patient Joan Chavez at Palomar Pomerado's 129-bed Villa Pomerado facility in Poway, where she and other patients joined nurses, doctors and administrators in a ceremony marking the garden's opening.

"I like to see things grow," said Chavez, 75, of Poway, who was applauded after carefully planting two cucumber seedlings during Monday's ceremonies. "It gets your mind off other things."

The lifelong gardener, who is recovering from a broken hip, planted the first seedlings, but other patients will be invited in coming days to join her in planting and tending to their own vegetables and small fruit trees.

Johnny Alfonso, the facility's activities director, said patients are praising the wide view of the garden located outside the large glass windows of the center's dining room. Murals featuring painted trees cover the walled backdrop for the garden.

"A resident said, 'I already feel good looking at it,'" Alfonso said.

Marilyn Bailey, the center's head nurse, cited years of medical research findings showing that access to nature can calm patients and speed recovery times.

Healing gardens, as they have come to be called, have become a popular trend with hospitals and care facilities around the country.

"Nature is but another name for health," Bailey said, quoting American poet and naturalist Henry David Thoreau.

Palomar Pomerado Health President and CEO Michael Covert said it was fitting that the formal ribbon cutting took place on the first day of international Earth Week events.

"We need to take better care of the planet," he said.

Covert said he knows healing gardens work, because it helped his late father during the final years of his life.

Covert said his father "had terrible dementia" and often showed hostility, but that he would "become a different person" when he visited a garden outside the Florida nursing facility where he was being treated several years ago.

"It calmed him down," Covert said. "He could sit out there and relax. He could speak in meaningful ways. He remembered things he had forgotten. He connected in some way with the garden. It was so special."