Healing garden grows memories
By Nick Hytrek, Journal staff writer | Posted: Saturday, July 05, 2008
Seana Head shows tomatoes that are growing in the Healing Garden at the Sanford Care Center in Vermillion, S.D. The interactive garden provides therapeutic opportunities for nursing home residents and patients at the adjoining Sanford Medical Center. (Photo by Nick Hytrek)
VERMILLION, S.D. -- The petunias, marigolds, roses and other blooms bring an array of colors to what used to be an ordinary nursing home courtyard.
But walk amidst the fresh blossoms, the young apple tree with three small, green apples growing from its branches, and there's more than vegetation growing here.
"They've got some tomatoes," Sanford Care Center resident Seana Head says excitedly, pointing to a planter box full of tomato plants, their vines supported by cages. As soon as you can inspect the small green tomatoes taking shape, Head urges you along the path.
"Feel this grass," she says, bending over a tall shoot of prairie grass so you can feel the head. "Isn't it soft?"
That soft grass, the tomatoes and other plants are providing exactly what the Dakota Hospital Foundation hoped for while spending the past four years planning and building the Healing Garden in a courtyard area between the care center and adjoining Sanford Medical Center.
The plants, along with an antique plow, International truck and windmill replica bring back memories for dementia patients. They give care center residents something new to look at and talk about every day. Physical therapy patients have a brighter setting in which to practice walking. The numerous benches give hospital patients, visitors and staffers a quiet place to sit and rest, eat lunch, relax.
"It's just a nice respite from the clinical setting or the office setting," said Mary Merrigan, hospital director of public relations.
Once just a plain patch of grass with a patio, the garden grew out of a request from a care center resident's family to put a garden in the space. Hospital officials and the Dakota Hospital Foundation took the idea and ran with it, bringing in a South Dakota State University landscaping professor and his class, local gardeners, hospital department heads and an architect to come up with ideas and a design.
What they came up with was a therapeutic, interactive garden that is not only beautiful to behold, it also gives patients something to hold onto.
"Everything out there is made to touch. It's just those things that make them want to do physical activity. Instead of walking 500 feet, they've got a garden to walk around in," said Bob Brockevelt, director of rehabilitation services, whose physical and occupational therapists work with patients on walking on the different types of surfaces, the same surfaces they'll be encountering once they go home, to improve their balance, coordination and stamina.
Since the garden opened in mid-May, hospice nurse Joanne Martin has watched the faces of dementia patients brighten upon seeing the vintage farm equipment, old-fashioned roses and bright, colorful flower beds.
"They identify with things ... it pulls the memories out of them. It improves the quality of their life for a few minutes," Martin said.
Staff members continue to realize more ways to incorporate the garden into everyday care and treatment.
"We probably haven't even touched what it can do," Brockevelt said.
Including the value of in-kind donations, the garden cost approximately $150,000, said Gene Lunn, Dakota Hospital Foundation director. But the effect it has had on patients in such a short amount of time is, as the credit card commercials say, priceless.
Head comes out to the garden every day she can. She used to raise gardens, she says. Now she has one again, one she can share with other patients, visitors and hospital workers.
"It's very enjoyable, relaxing," she said.
It's healing, in a way that any medication a doctor could prescribe will never match.
Nick Hytrek can be reached at 712-293-4226 or nickhytrek@siouxcityjournal.com.
But walk amidst the fresh blossoms, the young apple tree with three small, green apples growing from its branches, and there's more than vegetation growing here.
"They've got some tomatoes," Sanford Care Center resident Seana Head says excitedly, pointing to a planter box full of tomato plants, their vines supported by cages. As soon as you can inspect the small green tomatoes taking shape, Head urges you along the path.
"Feel this grass," she says, bending over a tall shoot of prairie grass so you can feel the head. "Isn't it soft?"
That soft grass, the tomatoes and other plants are providing exactly what the Dakota Hospital Foundation hoped for while spending the past four years planning and building the Healing Garden in a courtyard area between the care center and adjoining Sanford Medical Center.
The plants, along with an antique plow, International truck and windmill replica bring back memories for dementia patients. They give care center residents something new to look at and talk about every day. Physical therapy patients have a brighter setting in which to practice walking. The numerous benches give hospital patients, visitors and staffers a quiet place to sit and rest, eat lunch, relax.
"It's just a nice respite from the clinical setting or the office setting," said Mary Merrigan, hospital director of public relations.
Once just a plain patch of grass with a patio, the garden grew out of a request from a care center resident's family to put a garden in the space. Hospital officials and the Dakota Hospital Foundation took the idea and ran with it, bringing in a South Dakota State University landscaping professor and his class, local gardeners, hospital department heads and an architect to come up with ideas and a design.
What they came up with was a therapeutic, interactive garden that is not only beautiful to behold, it also gives patients something to hold onto.
"Everything out there is made to touch. It's just those things that make them want to do physical activity. Instead of walking 500 feet, they've got a garden to walk around in," said Bob Brockevelt, director of rehabilitation services, whose physical and occupational therapists work with patients on walking on the different types of surfaces, the same surfaces they'll be encountering once they go home, to improve their balance, coordination and stamina.
Since the garden opened in mid-May, hospice nurse Joanne Martin has watched the faces of dementia patients brighten upon seeing the vintage farm equipment, old-fashioned roses and bright, colorful flower beds.
"They identify with things ... it pulls the memories out of them. It improves the quality of their life for a few minutes," Martin said.
Staff members continue to realize more ways to incorporate the garden into everyday care and treatment.
"We probably haven't even touched what it can do," Brockevelt said.
Including the value of in-kind donations, the garden cost approximately $150,000, said Gene Lunn, Dakota Hospital Foundation director. But the effect it has had on patients in such a short amount of time is, as the credit card commercials say, priceless.
Head comes out to the garden every day she can. She used to raise gardens, she says. Now she has one again, one she can share with other patients, visitors and hospital workers.
"It's very enjoyable, relaxing," she said.
It's healing, in a way that any medication a doctor could prescribe will never match.
Nick Hytrek can be reached at 712-293-4226 or nickhytrek@siouxcityjournal.com.
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