Produce the Future

Contributor(s) Mary Jo Kreitzer, RN, PhDReviewer(s) Jean Larson, PhD, CTRS, HTR 

These gardens provide a place of refuge and promote healing in patients, families, and staff.  Any environment can promote healing, but gardens are particularly able to do so because humans are hard-wired to find nature engrossing and soothing.

According to two leaders in this field, Clare Cooper Marcus and Marni Barnes, healing comes because the gardens promote:

1. Relief from symptoms
2. Stress reduction
3. Improvement in overall sense of wellbeing and hopefulness

Healing gardens differ somewhat from therapeutic landscapes, which is another term used in healthcare. Therapeutic landscapes or gardens are designed to meet the particular needs of a specific patient population. They often engage that population actively and deliberately. Healing gardens, on the other hand, generally aim for a more passive involvement and are designed to provide benefits to a diverse population with different needs.

Regardless of age or culture, humans find nature restorative. In one study, researchers Marcus and Barnes found that more than two-thirds of people choose a natural setting to retreat to when stressed. In another study, 95% of those interviewed said their mood improved after spending time outside, changing from depressed, stressed, and anxious to more calm and balanced.

Why do we find nature so restorative? One school of thought holds that it is hardwired in our genes. Roger Ulrich, a leading researcher in healing gardens, summarizes it thus: "We have a kind of biologically prepared disposition to respond favorably to nature because we evolved in nature. Nature was good to us, and we tend to respond positively to environments that were favorable to us."

Another reason for our biological connection to nature could be that humans who paid close attention to nature gathered key information that helped them survive and reproduce. So the tendency to find nature engrossing lived on in those genes.

Many studies show that after a stressful event, images of nature very quickly produce a calming effect. Within three to four minutes after viewing nature scenes, blood pressure, respiration rate, brain activity, and the production of stress hormones all decrease and mood improves. This again has an evolutionary advantage because it allows us to recuperate and recover our energy quickly. This ability to recover from stress quickly in order to be ready to respond to new threats was important for our ancestors' survival.

Nature is also fundamentally linked to our human spirituality. Out in nature, we feel how we are connected to entities beyond ourselves and understand our interdependencies with other living beings. Nature also prompts us to reflect on the ever-changing nature of existence and what might lie beyond it. Nature provides a space in which we can connect spiritually both with ourselves and outside ourselves.