Healing, Sensory and Therapeutic Gardens

The title of this blog happens to be the title of the academic text I am writing this year. Routledge Press, London, have commissioned me to write the text for landscape architects, architects, urban planners and health care practitioners and students. The book details how we can use gardens for their ancient healing properties. As always I am advocating a low maintenance, sustainable approach to sensory garden design.

Regardless of the scale of the development, whether it is a small inner city residential garden, a public park, or an isolated patch of greenspace we can tap into the healing properties of gardens. When designed for health and well-being, even a humble suburban garden can be a sensory-rich, healing space.

We need to be mindful of the effect of colour. Different areas of the garden can be designed to evoke a certain mood, such that when the garden visitor needs support to feel calm, energised or humbled by the beauty of nature, we can offer those options within a space.

Water is an important element in a healing, sensory garden. As an essential element for life, we are not necessarily aware we need it around and available to us, but on a deep level respond positively with reduced cortisol levels (the stress hormone), reduced blood pressure and report feelings of positive mood and well-being when we have a 'blue view'.

Colour, shape and form are other elements we work with in a healing, sensory and therapeutic garden. Every healing garden needs plentiful seating options. Here the bright pink colour is balanced by softer tones of the planting. Sharp edged shapes are again softened and balanced by the predominantly rounded form of the flowers. The garden, in its totality, promotes the Greenstone Design aim of health and well-being, by design.

Elemental garden

New residential clients have asked us to design a water feature with gas flame. It is to be very much an elemental garden, featuring earth, wind , fire and water.

Their start point is a shrubby native bush-clad hillside outside their kitchen and adjacent to their outdoor dining terrace, in Wellington, New Zealand. Wind is naturally abundant, bare earth and rocky outcrops are all around. This natural gas seep in western NY State is inspiring the design. I love the way the flame is just sufficiently sheltered from the flow of water to coexist.

Sensory garden design using fire and water features allows us to reconnect with nature at a deep level. This client is at the top of his game in his working life so needs to come home to a deeply nurturing environment.

©2012 American Geophysical Union.   

Sensory gardens for sustainable communities

Sensory garden for public health

We have been asked to design sensory gardens to help break the cycle of drugs and violence, this time in a setting for 3-5 year olds, in Chicago. In such situations we need to look at three generations of need. Our sensory garden design must support all 3 generations in a way that empowers them to feel safe and strong. The healing powers of Nature are huge, generous and very effective.

Cost effective early intervention strategies are a key reason why sensory gardens are used in public health and education settings. By using sensory  gardens designed to bring the community in to the setting, adults and children who may be otherwise hard to reach are quietly treated, often without realising that they are.

Sensory gardens for health & well-being

My research into health & well-being shows sensory gardens to be a cost effective alternative treatment to traditional drug-based programmes for a variety of health concerns. Working with the Centre for Sustainability and Public Health in 2012 will allow further research in this important area.

We need to find a way to create sustainable, healthy, happy communities, that do not (literally and figuratively) cost the Earth. Well designed landscapes look to be able to provide the way forward.

May I wish you a very happy, healthy Holiday Season wherever you are. We will be celebrating Christmas with family, spending time in the garden and out in Nature. Remember, there is no such thing as bad weather, just poor clothing. Enjoy!

Sensory gardens for disabled children & their families

I was recently contacted by the mother of a young boy. He is 12 years old, wheelchair bound and gaining weight. His specialist advised the family to get a spa pool at home where he could do daily hydrotherapy.

A spa pool for hydrotherapy could be just that or it could become part of a wider opportunity to engage the senses. Water, especially when it is warm, has a relaxing quality we know from the childhood bathtime-before-bed routine. When we are realxed we feel more sociable, more creative and are more likely to open our other senses.

A spa pool may have been all the doctor prescribed but how much better if the occupational therapist, psychologist and others in the team had got together? If a spa pool can help mobility and combat weight gain, a deck around a pool can provide somewhere for friends and family to gather, to share jokes, to watch the clouds. When the deck's edges are planted with wildlife-friendly scented flowers and fruits, a fresh, tasty morsel can be added to the experience of hydrotherapy. When that deck is connected to a creative route through the garden, under light-blocking planting and out into bright sunshine, past rustling grasses and tinkling windchimes, the sensory garden is starting to fulfil its true potential.

The requirements of a disabled family member will necessarily take precedence in the design of a space. If you look to the wider needs of the family however, you can create something really special, an inclusive space that nutures the whole family. A sensory garden, well designed, will do just that. Greenstone Design UK are experts in creating sensory gardens for disabled children and their families.

Promoting wellness through sensory gardens

As I sit in my office/design studio, surrounded by technology, I know that my health (mental and physical) relies on the view outside the window - the bio-diverse mix of birds and trees and microrganisms that contain many natural 'chemcial cures' but also offer their intrinsic healing beauty. Commoditizing a green cure is difficult, which I suspect is why no one is doing it.

Leading researchers around the world have found and proven the link between health and a well designed natural environment.

The WHO has stated that depression will be the 2nd biggest cause of ill health globally by 2020. We now know depression is largely caused by a disconnect from the natural world and social isolation. Both conditions/situations are preventable and treatable, cost effectively, using well designed landscapes.

Does technology and 'equipment' have a place in this natural cure? Yes, probably, but perhaps not in the way many are thinking.

Climate change, Prince Charles and gardens

Prince Charles, and many others, have been called foolish for expressing environmental sympathies in the past, as with the confidence of their convictions they speak out. Are we foolish to speak out?

I believe that anyone with a social, moral or environmental conscience must stand up for what they believe in.

If we don’t speak plainly now we will be reponsible for the future. If we do speak plainly now we will also be responsible, but for a better future. If Prince Charles can stand up in front of the European parliament then I can stand up in front of groups of school children, teachers, developers, architects and contractors, local authorities, private individuals and anyone else who will listen. I will (continue to) spread the message that climate change is real, is happening already, but there are things we can do to lessen the impact and slow the rate of change.

We can do the obvious things like use less energy: (turn off the switch when you’re not using the appliance/light etc, combine car journeys to use your car more efficiently, insulate your home, design buildings for natural light and windows for natural ventilation) and the sometimes overlooked things like: recycle and reuse clothing and household items (the pulled together Vintage look is very ‘now’, for good reason!), harvest rainwater to protect against drought, plant trees (for shade and for fruit), grow fruit and vegetables at home, make our own compost, attract natural pest-eaters into our gardens so we do not use petro-chemical based fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides. Moss killers, earthworm killers and slug poisons, for example, all poison off the birds we need to spread the seeds, the bees and other insects we need to pollinate our food plants and provide honey. The only healthy soil additives are natural products like straw, compost, ‘fertiliser tea’ made from mixed food waste steeped in water. Improve your soil, plant a variety of tress, shrubs and low growing plants, attract a vibrant bird, reptile (frogs and lizards play their part in keeping plant pests under control) and insect community into your garden and watch the ‘pests’ population balance. Remember, as any healthy garden needs water, shade and some hot sun for us to enjoy, so too, we need varied habitats for the ideal mix of beneficial wildlife.

If we believe the saying “you are what you eat” then by extension we are what we put into the ground. Rule of thumb: If it says ‘poison’ on the bottle, don’t use it on your garden.