Gratitude and Gardeners

Dogwood blossom photo by Naomi Sachs

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
~ Marcel Proust

Free Delivery! The TLN Blog, Emailed to You

Photo by Naomi Sachs

Silly me: After all this time since moving to the our TLN Blog url, I only just realized that I haven’t been getting TLN Blog posts emailed to me since the move. I thought it would be automatic, but I was wrong! So, if you, too, have been feeling a certain lack of lustre in your life, it’s probably because you haven’t been getting your usual TLN Blog posts, either. And it’s not because we haven’t been posting; it’s because you need to sign up at this new site. Just look for “Subscribe to the TLN Blog” in the column to your right, and sign up.* Easy, and you’ll once again start receiving posts delivered to your virtual doorstep. And of course, if you never signed up to begin with, perhaps this post will inspire you to do so. It’s easier than trying to remember to check the blog, and many people have commented to us that for the beautiful images alone, they enjoy seeing our posts appear in their email inbox.

*Please note that there are two sign-up forms. One is for the TLN Blog, mentioned above, and one is for the free TLN Newsletter. Why not sign up for both?

Sustainable AND Restorative Landscapes: Four To Watch from Sustainable Sites Initiative’s Pilot Projects

Sustainable Sites Initiative

Healing Garden at Cayuga Medical Center, one of SITES' case studies

The Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES™) has announced its 175 Pilot Projects, and here, from what I can tell, are the ones specifically related to therapeutic landscapes:

Alderwood Longterm Care Facility
Baddeck, Cape Breton
Project Type: Residential
Project Team: Highland Landscapes for Lifestyle; Ekistics Planning & Design; WHW Architects; Alderwood Corporation
Description: The Alderwood Rest Home is a greenfield development that is measuring and evaluating the sustainability goals and deliverables that will contribute to improvements in landscape design, construction and maintenance. Protection, restoration, environmental mitigation, orientation, plantings, walkways, outdoor rooms, and hardscape have been strategically combined to provide an environment that enhances resident wellness, optimizes resident’s outdoor usage and integrates the property’s diverse natural environment.

Health Village Fludir
Fludir, Iceland
Project Type: Commercial
Project Team: Health Village Fludir Ltd. and Vist & Vera ltd.
Description: This 16-acre greenfield project is associated with Iceland’s first health village. Site plans will focus on creating a walkable and ADA accessible environment including health paths, fitness zones, a series of natural open spaces, and a healing garden. Vehicular traffic will be limited and parking placed on the outer periphery. The project is seen as an opportunity to test SITES guidelines in Iceland and serve as a model for sustainable development in the country. (http://healthvillage.is)

The People’s Garden (USDA)
Washington, District of Columbia
Project Type: Governmental complex
Project Team: USDA-Office of Operations, USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service, USDA- Forest Service
Description: The landscape outside USDA headquarters has been redesigned to showcase sustainability, nutrition, and healthy eating through rainwater harvesting, removal of invasives, and installation of working beehives, a vegetable garden, and a green roof among other design elements. This new landscape will support the agency’s educational mission while demonstrating to other public institutions that sustainable practices can be successfully implemented on a high profile, urban site with a rigorous aesthetic design requirement.

The Barn Raising Project
Millington, Tennessee
Project Type: Institutional/Educational
Project Team: Habitat for Hope, PLACE Alliance, archimania
Description: This non-profit organization exists to provide holistic care for families enduring the serious illness of a child. They will transform its 48-acre greenfield campus into a model for sustainability. The environmentally friendly development plan includes cabins, a village center, lodge, chapel, equestrian center, and staff residences. The team believes alignment with SITES will benefit the families that Habitat for Hope serves.

Several other pilot projects are for children, education, and public parks; you can view the entire list here: http://www.sustainablesites.org/pilot/.

These SITES Pilot Projects represent a diverse cross-section of project types, sizes and geographic locations in various stages of development from design to construction and maintenance. SITES Pilot Projects will be the first projects in the United States and abroad to demonstrate the application of The Sustainable Sites Initiative: Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009, released on November 5, 2009.

SITES has a Human Health and Well-Being component as well as those that are more strictly environmental, which is very exciting to those of us in this field.

For more information about the Sustainable Sites Initiative, visit their website, and here’s a good overview of the Pilot Projects from ASLA’s The Dirt.

The above image is from one of SITES’ Case Studies, the Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, NY.

Now online! Nature-Based Learning and Play for Children with Autism and Special Needs

Since Richard Louv began his No Child Left Inside campaign, we have seen a wonderful groundswell around the importance of children experiencing the natural world. And at the same time, sadly, we continue to see an alarming rise in children with autism and other related disorders. According to the Centers for Disease Control, autism now affects 1 in every 110 American children. This new number is a staggering 57% increase from 2002-2006. Clearly, we need more research on prevention and treatment options, but we also need more ways to help those children (and their families) on the “autism spectrum” who are coping on a daily basis.

One way that we can help is by designing environments that support children on the spectrum, including outdoor play and learning spaces. That’s why Tara Vincenta – Principal at Artemis Landscape Architects and creator of the SOL (Sequential Outdoor Learning) Environment –  and I were thrilled when KaBOOM! approached us about doing an online training on this very subject. We’ve had a great time collaborating and are happy to announce that the training is now available on the KaBOOM! website, and will soon be up on the SOL Environment and Therapeutic Landscapes Network websites as well.

The free online training is called “Prescription for Play: Nature-based Play and Learning for Autistic and Special Needs Children.” Here’s the description:

Join landscape architects Naomi Sachs, Director of the Therapeutic Landscapes Network and Tara Vincenta, creator of SOL (Sequential Outdoor Learning) Environment as they explore research and design considerations for creating outdoor, nature-based play and learning environments for autistic and special needs children. Many of the challenges faced by autistic children are shared with a broader community of special needs children, including motor, neuromuscular, cognitive, sensory and communication issues, and visual and auditory impairment. Sachs and Vincenta will share ideas for creating outdoor spaces that allow children to play at their own comfort level, overcoming common challenges in a safe, FUN, nature-based environment that is equally engaging for any child.

Go to KaBOOM’s Hot Topics in Play page to access the training, and if ours is not the first training, just scroll down until you see it. You’ll find other great topics there as well, and once you join KaBOOM (free, of course), you can access any and all. KaBOOM! is a wonderful non-profit organization whose mission is to create great playspaces through the participation and leadership of communities, and whose vision is “a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America.”

You can also download a pdf of the supplemental materials – a list resources in print and online about this topic – from the KaBOOM website, and we’ll have those on our respective websites soon, too.

Many, many thanks to KaBOOM! (and especially to Kiva) for this wonderful opportunity, and to you, dear reader, for spreading the word (yes, that’s a hint).

Healing the Neighborhood: The Power of Gardens

Nicola Allen in front of her North End Hartford home (photo courtesy Hartford Journal)

Nicola Allen knew that she had to do something to make her North End neighborhood in Hartford, CT safer and nicer. And after much thought and some time driving around suburban neighborhoods that seemed better, she arrived at the solution: Gardens. “Suburban homeowners took pride in their homes and landscapes. She decided to make her property look more like the landscapes she admired,” reports Theresa Sullivan Barger in a recent Hartford Courant article, Urban Flower Power: Gardens Turn Blighted Burton Street Area Into Oasis Of Color.” By working in her own garden, Allen has inspired others in the neighborhood to do the same, and their efforts have paid off: The neighborhood really has improved. Did she know that environmental psychologists have been researching this subject and coming up with similar findings?

Frances Kuo and others at the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory, University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana, have been documenting the importance of nature in the built environment, especially in urban areas with high crime rates. Again and again, they have found that the greener the surroundings, the healthier, happier, and safer the people are who live there. All of these papers can be accessed from the LHHL website, and you can link to them individually below:

Adding Trees Makes Life More Manageable: Trees ease poverty’s burden in inner city neighborhoods.
Kuo, F.E. (2001). Coping with poverty: Impacts of environment and attention in the inner city. Environment & Behavior, 33(1), 5-34.

Views of Greenery Help Girls Succeed: Girls with a home view of nature score higher on tests of concentration and self-discipline.
Faber Taylor, A., Kuo, F.E., & Sullivan, W.C. (2002). “Views of Nature and Self-Discipline: Evidence from Inner City Children.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, 22, 49-63.

Vegetation May Cut Crime in the Inner City: In an inner city neighborhood, the greener the residence, the lower the crime rate.
Kuo, F.E., & Sullivan, W.C. (2001). “Environment and crime in the inner city: Does vegetation reduce crime?” Environment and Behavior, 33(3), 343-367.

Trees Linked with [Less] Domestic Violence in the Inner City: Aggression and Violence are Reduced with Nature Nearby.
Kuo, F.E. & Sullivan W.C. (2001). Aggression and violence in the inner city: Impacts of environment via mental fatigue. Environment & Behavior, 33(4), 543-571.

Where Trees are Planted, Communities Grow: Green spaces entice neighbors outdoors on a regular basis, where they build friendship and ties to one another.
Kuo, F.E., Sullivan, W.C., Coley, R.L., & Brunson, L. (1998). Fertile ground for community: Inner-city neighborhood common spaces. American Journal of Community Psychology, 26(6), 823-851.

Rachel Carson ‘Sense of Wonder’ Contest

Rachel CarsonThis looks like a beautiful opportunity. I love the intergenerational aspect:

Rachel Carson Intergenerational Poetry, Essay, Photo and Dance Contest

Sponsored by US EPA, Generations United, the Rachel Carson Council, Inc. and the Dance Exchange

In 2007, the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s life.  She was an American biologist who cared deeply about the natural world around her. In The Sense of  Wonder, Ms. Carson wrote “There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after the night and spring after the winter.” And it is also important to remember how nature can serve as a source of strength, as she noted with the comment from the book, that, “Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”

To honor this amazing woman, the EPA, Generations United, The Dance Exchange and the Rachel Carson Council, Inc., are sponsoring the Fourth Annual Rachel Carson Intergenerational photo, essay,  poetry and dance contest “that best expresses the Sense of Wonder that you feel for the sea, the night sky, forests, birds, wildlife, and all that is beautiful to your eyes.” We want you to share this love of nature with a child and others around you.  When we teach our eyes and ears and senses to focus on the wonders of nature, we open ourselves to the wonders around us.

Submissions are due June 16, 2010.  The finalists will be selected by a panel of judges. Then the public will be asked to vote for their favorites in each category: photography, essay, poetry and dance. Entries must be intergenerational projects involving persons from different ages and generations. The winners will be posted on our websites and announced in October.

www.gu.org
http://www.rachelcarsoncouncil.org/

http://www.danceexchange.org/

www.epa.gov/aging (this is the correct link now – sorry to those of you who tried it before, and ditto with the one below. Thanks to one of our readers for pointing this out!).

For more information please see: www.epa.gov/aging/resources/thesenseofwonder/index.htm

If you know of someone who might be interested, please share this blog post!

ASLA Healthcare and Therapeutic Design PPN Event: Informal Walking Tour in Washington, D.C.

Photo of the American Psychological Association's Rooftop Labyrinth by Lea Goode-Harris

Registration for the annual ASLA meeting (American Society of Landscape Architects) has begun, and it’ll be in Washington, D.C. this year, from September 10-13. But before you book your ticket, think about joining the Healthcare and Therapeutic Design (HTD) and Children’s Outdoor Environments Professional Practice Networks for a “meeting before the meeting” walking tour of some D.C. sites that relate to human health and well-being, on September 9th.

Here’s the write-up from the HTD PPN Therapeutic Landscapes Design social networking site (which is open to all):

“We plan to spend the day visiting sites on and along the Mall to generate discussions on how they relate to our common interest in Therapeutic Gardens.  We are considering several sites, including  the Vietnam Memorial, the Butterfly Garden, the Garden at the Native American Museum and the rooftop garden and labyrinth at the American Psychological Association.  After the site visits, we hope to gather and ‘debrief’ to share our thoughts.  The date is Sept. 9th, the day before the actual meeting. We will meet in the morning around 8:30 AM and continue through the day (you can join us in the afternoon, depending upon your travel plans.)  We will be sending out further information as we get closer to the date.  There is no cost and we will stop for lunch along the Mall. We will hope to continue the conversation at the PPN meeting on Saturday or Sunday.  We will be sending out further information in the coming weeks and asking you to RSVP for the event.”

If you’re interested in attending and don’t want to join the above-mentioned site, just leave a comment here and I’ll hook you up.

While researching for this blog post, I found a great post by Lea Goode-Harris about the APA’s rooftop garden and labyrinth on her blog Tales from the Labyrinth. Lots of good pictures! This is one of the many projects funded by the TKF Foundation; we’ve written about them in the past, and I’m sure we’ll be doing so again. They do great work. The APA labyrinth will be the first stop on our walking tour that day, and they are excited to show us around. In case you can’t make our “meeting before the meeting” but want to visit the green roof with labyrinth, it’s at 10 G Street, N.E., and is open to the public Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. You can get access by asking the guard at the front desk (this from the APA website).

And if you want more on labyrinths, check out the Therapeutic Landscapes Network’s Labyrinths page.

A Network Growing Strong: 1,000 members on Facebook!

Spider-Web_13174

Web photo by Henry Domke

As of today, the Therapeutic Landscapes Network has over 1,000 members on Facebook. Cue balloons falling from the ceiling and champagne cork popping!

Why is this such a big deal, other than being a nice big round number? Because we are creating a truly interactive, dynamic network, that’s why.

Ever since I first started the Therapeutic Landscapes Database back in 1999, I have wanted to create a “forum” – a sort of virtual gathering space – for sharing information, questions, and ideas. This was also one of the goals for our new website, and we’ve been knocking ideas around about how to best create this forum. In the meantime, Facebook started these “pages” where businesses and organizations could have members, or fans, or likers…the name keeps changing but the idea is the same: A group of people who are connected around the same issue.

And so, at least for the time being, the TLN’s Facebook page has become that forum. In addition to seeing what the TLN posts – and we do post information, events, links to other good organizations, picture, and so on almost every day – here are some of the other ways you can use the FB page:

  • Share information: Post stuff (links to articles and organizations, pictures, questions, thoughts, inspirations) on the wall – all members (fans) can post.
  • Comment on other people’s posts – great way to share information, ideas, etc.
  • See related organizations – In the left-hand column, see our “favorite pages” section for other like-minded organizations such as the Children & Nature Network, Horticultural Therapy Institute, the National Wildlife Federation.

So if you haven’t already joined us, please do. Believe me, I have my own issues with Facebook, especially with their new privacy policy, but for now, it is the best “forum” venue for us.

If you still don’t want to join Facebook, here are some other ways you can still be an active participant in the TLN:

1. Join our mailing list so that you get our monthly newsletter;

2. Leave comments on this blog – comments are a great way to get a discussion/conversation going between blog readers;

3. Join our group on Land8Lounge, the social networking site for landscape architects and designers (anyone is welcome, that’s just who it’s geared towards);

4. Contact us directly.

Thanks to each and every one of our members for making the “Network” part of the Therapeutic Landscapes Network’s name real and meaningful. We can learn so much from each other.

And thanks to Henry Domke for this beautiful (and yes, symbolic) web image.

Naomi Sachs, Founder & Director, Therapeutic Landscapes Network

We Are Here! A new home for the TLN Blog.

Photo of monarch butterfly courtesy of Henry Domke

The Therapeutic Landscapes Network Blog has a new home – on the Therapeutic Landscapes Network website!

What a concept, right? It’s been a long time coming, and we are happy to be here. WordPress, our new blog platform, has a rather steep learning curve, so please “pardon our dust” as we learn the ropes. This blog will soon be even better than it was before, and best of all, it’s all nestled cozily within our Therapeutic Landscapes Network website. Many, many thanks to our technical magician, Randy Caruso, for making this happen, and to an anonymous donor (you know who you are!) for funding this giant leap.

Our new url is www.healinglandscapes.org/blog. Please make a note of this, and spread the word!

Upcoming talk by Topher Delaney: “Garden: An Act of Faith.”

Looks to be a good talk by garden artist Topher Delaney on Tuesday, May 4, 7:00-8:30 p.m.
This talk is NOT at Arnold Arboretum – it’s at Trinity Church.
Details below.

Here’s the blurb from the Arnold Arboretum’s newsletter:

“A garden is in essence the consequence of action. To make a garden is to invest in the future. The verb, ‘to garden,’ references physical action (and an) evocation of a faith in the future.” Artist’s statement

At the age of 39, Topher Delaney, a San Francisco-based artist and landscape designer, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Ms. Delaney made a pact with God: If she survived, she vowed she would devote her practice to helping others heal. Over the past twenty-two years, Ms. Delaney has focused on creating designs of healing gardens for hospitals and sanctuaries. She believes “gardens are sanctuaries, hallowed places of personal retreat.” Topher Delaney’s projects explore cultural interpretations of landscape architecture, site installation, and public art. Her project sites range in scale from intimate to expansive, from private residences to medical facilities to corporate rooftop gardens and large-scale public art installations. Her gardens at the Marin Cancer Center and the San Diego Children’s Hospital demonstrate the palpably healing character of her creations. Learn more by visiting her website.

Fee $20 Arboretum and Trinity members, $25 nonmember

Tickets may be purchased in person or on the phone: 617-536-0944 X225. On-line tickets www.arboretum.harvard.edu

This lecture takes place at Trinity Church, 206 Clarendon Street in Copley Square, Boston. Offered by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and Trinity Church in the City of Boston.