Gardens as Medicine

The Healing Garden at Massachusetts General Hospital. (Photo courtesy Mass General)
Want to feel better? Think nature. Healing gardens are a growing trend. Many major medical centers, including the 6,300-square-foot rooftop garden at the Yawkey Center for Outpatient Care, part of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and the NIH Clinical Center, and long-term care facilities, are adding them. And so are homeowners.
The basic elements of a healing or therapeutic garden include:

• Plants and wildlife
• Walkways
• Private sitting areas
• Shade
• A water feature

Most are outdoors. Some have raised planters so patients and family members can plant, weed, and work the garden. Sometimes they have medicinal herbs, such as primrose or foxglove.
Scientists say natural settings can lower stress, blood pressure and heart rate, and muscle tension and negative thoughts. The idea is that lowering stress can boost the immune system and speed healing.
Physicians at Jupiter Medical Center in Florida realized that some patients who could see—they didn’t even have to be in—the hospital garden had less pain, needed fewer medications and had shorter stays than patients without a garden view. I don’t know how they figured that out, but what an endorsement!
The gardens’ restorative and medicinal benefits have many converts: substance abuse, pediatric, burn, HIV/AIDS, hospice, cancer, stroke, brain injury, psychiatric, and dementia patients.
But they’re really intended for a wider audience: not just patients, but visitors, family members waiting for surgery to be over, exhausted caregivers, and staff looking for a breather. Some support groups meet in healing gardens.
How come it took so long for us to catch on? They’ve been around forever from the Middle Ages to ancient Egypt and Greece to Japan (as in Zen gardens). In 1879, Friends Hospital in Philadelphia started a program for psychiatric patients who staff noticed were acting calmer after being in the ground gardens.
Don’t have a healing garden? Relax! Here’s what you can do:

1. Create your own mini-garden. Even on a city balcony, you can have an area of plants. You don’t need all of the features (water, pathways, private sitting areas) to have a lovely oasis.
2. Have land and want a more professional therapeutic garden? Use a landscape architect.
3. Call medical centers and ask if they have gardens. Go visit. If you’re considering a home mini-version, see what you like and what you don’t like. Or just enjoy.
4. The next time you’re visiting a relative or friend in long-term care, take them outside. If there are gardens and pathways on the grounds, hang out there awhile. Walking around the grounds is good exercise for both of you.
5. If there’s no formal healing garden that you know of, don’t sweat it. Head to your local park or arboretum.

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Dr. Bill Thomas and Alive Inside...Wow!

A Culture Change is Coming to Texas

 In the United States a movement has begun that is changing the way long term care communities are being operated. This exciting culture change has taken off across the country and is slowing making its way into long term care institutions of Texas. The Eden Alternative model revolves around creating human habitats that promote growth and purpose for both Elders and their caregivers. 

          It all started when the founder, Dr. Bill Thomas, began serving as a local nursing home doctor. As he was making his rounds one day, he asked one of his aging patients if there was anything he could do for her today. Her response was, “Doctor, I’m so lonely!” He went home that night and scanned every medical index in existence in search of a treatment for loneliness, but there was nothing. The following day, Dr. Thomas went to the nursing home and observed the environment. What he saw were his Elders suffering – not from physical ailments but from plagues of the human spirit: loneliness, helplessness, and boredom. He began to imagine a different kind of world … a place where humans could actually live and not sit around waiting to die. And so began the story of The Eden Alternative.

The core concept of The Eden Alternative is simple. Through a set of principles and training strategies, this alternative can help transform the places where Elders live, and create places where these Elders will live and thrive.

Currently there are over 300 communities nationwide that have qualified as Eden Registered homes. Texas, however, is home to only three of these Eden homes. In Flower Mound Texas, there is a community that has recently began their Eden journey  in hopes of becoming the only registered Eden Alternative assisted living in the entire state. Kim Geron, the Administrator at Flower Mound Assisted Living said, “When I personally began looking for a home for my aging parents, it became very clear to me that these senior ‘institutions’ were just that … institutions. Institution being a word that is commonly associated with white walls and locked doors. I knew they deserved more! The Eden Alternative is an amazing culture change that was developed to give Elders the kind of life they deserve. A life that is full of purpose, meaning, spontaneity, laughter, companionship, and growth.  Just because you become older, doesn’t mean you are done living.”

Flower Mound Assisted living is hosting a training for anyone interested in becoming an Eden Associate on June 12^th, 13th, and 14^th at their community. They are inviting leadership teams, organizations, and anyone along the entire care continuum, who are interested in initiating a positive culture change and journey into their organization, to please join them. If you would like information on this exciting training opportunity, contact Tiffany Smith at 972-539-9444 or on their website at flowermoundalf.com.

Being New

When is the last time you were the ‘new kid’? Was it when you started a new job, attended a new church, or perhaps it was while attending a new school? We all have been in this position and remember the awkwardness of not knowing what the ‘norm’ was. Not knowing what we should do, where we should go, or what lunch table to sit at.

In Dr. Bill Thomas’ book Into the Arms of Elders, he shares about wise leadership and how it makes a difference for someone coming into a new place. In the book, Bill and his wife Jude are shipwrecked and washed ashore on an unknown island, where an elder inhabiting the island, takes the couple in. All of a sudden, Bill and Jude, who were independent people, have to depend on strangers to survive. Thrown into the unknown, where everything is new, they have no choice but to lean on their caregiver and other villagers that share similar pasts. Guided in their journey by the wisdom of others.

Proving that wise leadership is vital in creating a caring  and welcoming community.