Where’d the blogger go?

Image courtesy Henry Domke Fine Art


It’s been weeks since the last blog post. I’m sorry. This happened last year, too, because right now, this TLN blogging thing is a one-woman show, and the one woman happens to be frantically busy since spring arrived on the scene. The new Therapeutic Landscapes Network website is getting close to completion, which is very exciting (and very time-consuming). We plan to launch in June. Design work has also picked up – whether that’s a sign of a gradually recovering economy or just spring, I’m not sure, but I’m grateful. 

The TLN is also looking for a summer intern! If you or someone you know would like to live in or near Beacon, NY (60 miles north of NYC – an easy ride on the Metro North line) this summer and work (part-time, unpaid) on most aspects of the Therapeutic Landscapes Network, please see our post on the ASLA joblink website. This is a great opportunity to learn about healing gardens and other landscapes that facilitate health and wellness; to learn or hone valuable skills such as writing, research, development, communication, grantwriting, Dreamweaver and HTML, and pretty much anything else that goes on here; and of course to help the TLN grow and thrive. If you’re interested, post a comment and we’ll get back with you. 

In the meantime, please be patient and stay tuned for the big launch and the TLN offering even more great information and abilities for people to connect and collaborate; we promise it’ll be worth the wait!

New book! “Restorative Commons: Creating Health and Well-being through Urban Landscapes”

I’m very excited about this hot-off-the-press book, the result of the 2007 Meristem Forum “Restorative Commons for Community Health.” This collection of 18 articles, edited by Lindsay Campbell and Anne Wiesen and published by the U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station, “…explores human health in relation to the urban environment, drawing attention to sites and programs that utilize restorative design, foster civic stewardship of natural resources, and promote resilient neighborhoods.” If you know what the Therapeutic Landscapes Network is about (providing information and education about landscapes that facilitate health and well-being), you know we’re all over this one! You can get more information, and request or download a copy of the book, by clicking on this Meristem splashpage.

An “Urban Book Launch” is the first in a series of upcoming events surrounding the book’s release. It will be in New York City on Thursday, May 7th at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue at 13th Street. Book talk from 6-7 PM and book signing from 7-8 PM.
See you there!

Planting the Healing Garden: Medicinal Herbs

Lavender fields image courtesy Oregon Lavender Festival website, www.oregonlavenderdestinations.com

Lavender fields image courtesy Oregon Lavender Festival website, www.oregonlavenderdestinations.com

One of the most frequently-asked questions at the Therapeutic Landscapes Network is about what grows in a healing garden. Many people assume that a “therapeutic landscape” is a garden filled with herbs grown and harvested for their medicinal properties – in essence, that the healing comes from the plants in the garden. And this is certainly true some of the time (for a more thorough explanation about and definition of healing gardens, therapeutic landscapes, and landscapes for health, see this post and this post). More often, though, a healing garden is simply a garden filled with plants; research has shown that the more heavily planted a garden is, the more restorative it will be. The type of plant seems to be less important, though a variety of flora that stimulates the senses is a good start.

That said, many healing gardens contain at least some medicinal herbs, which are grown for a variety reasons: Their scent, or texture, or aesthetic qualities, or for their symbolism (for example, Topher Delaney designed the Carolyn S. Stolman Healing Garden at the Avon Foundation Breast Center in San Francisco, CA with plants that were traditionally used to treat cancer). Are they always harvested, processed, and used for salutary purposes? Nope. The fact is that especially in a healthcare setting, there often isn’t time or knowledge or the right equipment for, say, distilling Echinacea flowers into the tincture that you would use to boost the immune system. Are they beautiful, native, easy-to-maintain flowers that attract butterflies and symbolize health? Absolutely! Do they get harvested to ward off the common cold? Not usually.

The wonderful thing about herbs is their versatility. Lavender, for example, is easy to grow; drought tolerant; beautiful; attracts honeybees; smells wonderful; and is easy to harvest for a variety of uses, including in tea, cooking, baking, and potpourri. Lavender is known for its calming properties, and, if distilled in a tincture, is an excellent anti-bacterial disinfectant.

Some other reasons to grow herbs:

1. Herbs are great for children’s gardens because they tend to be easy to grow and are a delight to the senses.

2. Many herbs do well in containers and small spaces, as they don’t take up much space and often need less water than other annuals or perennials. For many years, the only gardens I had were herb gardens in pots on steps or front porches.

3. To the delight of gardeners with deer, rabbits, and other ravenous garden invaders, many herbs are not attractive for nibbling. In fact, sometimes they can even act as a deterrent and a “mask” for other more inviting flora.

4. Herbs often do “double duty” as culinary and medicinal herbs. If you have a kitchen garden, you may already be growing medicinal herbs: Rosemary improves memory and circulation and relieves sore throats and gums; peppermint aids digestion and treats sore throats, colds, and toothaches; parsley cures urinary tract infections and also helps to alleviate bad breath; marjoram treats tonsillitis, asthma, and bronchitis; thyme is used to treat gastrointestinal problems as well as sore throats and coughs; lemon balm is calming; basil reduces fever, lowers blood pressure, and is also an analgesic.

Sometimes you don’t even have to grow medicinal herbs – you can simply find them in your backyard or woods; those dandelions and pursane plants that are “ruining” your lawn? Think of them (or better yet, use them!) as medicinal herbs and/or delicious, nutritious greens and maybe your grass will look greener on this side (who needs a full-blown victory garden when you can just graze from your weedy lawn, right?). Worried about the stinging nettle at the edge of the garden? Harvest it – carefully! – to treat a whole slew of ailments, as well as for delicious meals like nettle soup.

With any herb, a little research may be needed to find out what part of the plant to use and how to prepare it for use in an herbal remedy. Sometimes it’s as simple as harvesting the flowers (chamomile, lavender) or leaves (lemon balm, peppermint) and making tea, other times preparation may be a bit more complex.

There are so many good books and websites about medicinal herbs, but here are a few resources that we list on the Therapeutic Landscapes Network. If you know of a great book, website, organization, or garden as resource about medicinal herbs, please share it with us! We will gladly add it. We are also looking for more examples of healthcare gardens and horticultural therapy programs that use specific plant material, including medicinal herbs. Use the comments section at the end of this post to submit suggestions, ideas, and information.

To get you started, here’s a nice article from About.com about common medicinal herbs that are easy to grow, harvest, and use.

And here are a few fairly comprehensive websites to bookmark as references:

Herbs to Herbs

Plants for a Future (Includes a 7,000 plant database for US and UK, and they have a book, too. Very impressive!)

Traditional Chinese Medicine Database System

The University of Washington Medicinal Herb Garden

And thanks to WMassHerbGarden on twitter for this recommendation: Growing 101 Herbs That Heal.

Planting the Healing Garden: Bring on the Bees!

This image is courtesy of sciencemuseum.org.uk
I haven’t been able to keep up with the regular blog posts lately (hm, same thing happened last spring, I wonder why?), and today is not much of an exception. I’m actually going to direct you to a great article on bumblebees and honeybees on the Fine Gardening website (“Bring the Buzzzzz Back to Your Garden”); it’s got some great information about various kinds of bees and what you can plant in your garden to attract them. And here’s another great website that I stumbled upon while looking for good bee pictures: The Science Museum’s “Bumblebees like it hot.”
 
As a landscape designer who specializes in restorative gardens, I have the funny experience of some clients wanting gardens that attract bees, and other clients wanting gardens that don’t. After a nasty yellowjacket incident when I was five (involving over 25 of the beasts attacking me after I accidentally stepped on their nest), I’ve struggled to master my stinging-insect phobia. I can relate to people who would be happy if the bees just stayed away. Nevertheless, I like to educate clients about the fact that honeybees and bumblebees rarely sting (something I’ve learned from my own gardening experience – I’ve been stung by many a wasp in my life, but never by a bee), and I also stress the importance of providing food and habitat for our wonderful pollinating friends who’ve been having a bit of a tough time lately (you can read about Colony Collapse Disorder on many websites and blogs, but here’s the Wikipedia article to get you started). Incidentally, beekeeping has really taken off in the past couple of years. A friend in Beacon has a great blog called Beacon Bee, and I’ve been learning a lot from her. There are even urban beekeepers; in france, they call it “concrete honey.”

New ASLA Professional Practice Network: Children’s Outdoor Environments

Here’s another sign that people are recognizing the importance of outdoor environments for kids: The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) recently approved a new Professional Practice Network (PPN) on Children’s Outdoor Environments. The Healthcare and Therapeutic Design and other PPNs have touched on this subject, but it’s high time it had its own PPN, so kudos to Jena Ponti, this year’s chair, for making it happen. Here’s her guest blog post about the new ASLA Children’s Outdoor Environments PPN:

“Landscape architects play a critical role in advocating and designing a variety of places for children to play, learn, and develop a relationship with the natural environment to carry with them into adulthood and citizenship.  The movement to (re)connect children with nature has been steadily growing and gaining momentum.  

In a time when children, on average, spend 45 hours a week “plugged in” and less than 30 minutes a week in outdoor unstructured play, our profession has no option but to act.

One exciting step forward is the recent passing of the No Child Left Inside Act H.R. 3036 and S. 1981.  This Act symbolizes recognition on a federal level of the movement to uplift ecological literacy in schools through enhanced environmental education curriculum.  The NCLI Act requires K-12 school systems to strengthen environmental education curriculums, provide teacher training, and provide federal grant money for schools to pay for environmental education.  This Act will provide $100 million a year to support this work in participating school systems.”

For more information on the Children’s Outdoor Environments PPN please contact Jena Ponti, RLA at jena@bruceboody.com or click HERE. 

Many thanks to Jena for this guest post, and to A.S. for the photo of his lovely daughter.

Alzheimer’s Awareness Perennial Garden

Better Homes & Gardens has teamed up with the Alzheimer’s Association to offer an exclusive Alzheimer Awareness Perennial Garden to help champion Alzheimer’s research and programs.
The collection of five perennials (echinacea, aster, salvia, phlox, and sedum) in whites and blues creates a beautiful, fragrant display that also attracts butterflies, all while raising awareness about and funding for Alzheimer’s disease.
The Alzheimer’s Association receives 10% of the gross sales from all Alzheimer’s Awareness Perennial Gardens (which sell for $99.95) to support research and services in communities nationwide for people touched by Alzheimer’s and related types of dementia. Recipients get a personalized gift card, planting instructions, and a planting plan. 
Nice idea, right? Thanks to Jasmine’s Blog for blogging about this first! As she so eloquently put it, “Not only does the garden raise funds for the fight against Alzheimer’s, but part of the beauty of the concept is the stress-reduction offered by the pastime of gardening. The Alzheimer’s Association hopes that some of the 10 million unpaid caregivers in America will find relaxation through gardening. The kit also makes a beautiful tribute to a loved one.”

Alzheimer’s Association conference in Houston, May 1st

Image of hawthorne blossoms courtesy of Lotus Petal’s Flickr page
Hawthorne is considered to be a good herb to improve 
memory and mental alertness. Learn more on this website.

Mark your calendars for the Alzheimer’s Association‘s Schlicting Education Conference for Professionals, May 1st, 2009 in Houston, TX. This announcement came through someone who’s interested in therapeutic landscapes, so imagine the conference will have some component about outdoor space. Find out more by visiting this website.
Many thanks to Suzanne at the Alzheimer’s Association’s Houston & Southeast TX Chapter for the heads-up!

Signs of Spring – Lovely images from boston.com

A/P photo of crocuses in Husum, Germany by Heribert Proepper. 
One of many beautiful images at boston.com’s The Big Picture.

Spring is inching along at a snail’s pace here in the northeast (in the 30’s and windy today), so boston.com‘s collection of giant, gorgeous images – “Signs of Spring” – were a welcome reminder that it really is coming. And that people and animals celebrate it in so many different ways. Enjoy! 

Landscapes of Remembrance: Cemeteries as Healing Landscapes

 

Image of Stirling Cemetery in Scotland courtesy of The Daily Undertaker, an interesting blog about love, grief, and remembrance.

Cemeteries as healing landscapes? I can just imagine some the comment: “Um, I hate to break it to ya, but those folks are, well, you know, beyond healing.” Sure, cemeteries are for people who have died. But just as much, they are for the living: We plan them, bury and visit our family and friends in them, and maintain them – individual gravesites, family burial plots, and cemeteries as a whole. People also visit cemeteries as parks – more on that in a bit. Grief is one of the most painful of human emotions, and mortality is one of most people’s greatest fears. Nevertheless, cemeteries can be powerful landscapes not just as sites to inter the dead but as places for us to grieve, remember, and even celebrate life. All of these life-affirming actions contribute to our health and well-being.

Maya Lin Veterans Memorial Washington D.C.

Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

For years, I’ve thought of memorials as healing landscapes, and there’s a page of the Therapeutic Landscapes Network devoted to memorials. They serve as reminders and touchstones for the living to remember people and events. But it wasn’t until recently, when a local cemetery board contacted me about a design job, that I started to think of cemeteries (or what we called graveyards in the no-nonsense New England village where I grew up) as healing landscapes. They both serve as landscapes of remembrance, catalysts for individual and collective grieving and memory.

Frederick Law Olmsted, “the father of landscape architecture,” was inspired to create public parks in urban areas after learning that people were spending their Sundays at Mt. Auburn Cemetery because it was the only park-like setting within close reach of the city. Olmsted also designed some beautiful and historically significant cemeteries, including Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, CA. When I was in graduate school at UC Berkeley, I used to visit Mountain View; I had no connection to the people buried there, but it was a beautiful, quiet, serene landscape for walking and thinking.

There are millions of cemeteries, of all different kinds, in all different places. Some are sad and bleak, some are beautiful and park-like, some are tourist destinations for famous people (Elvis, John Lennon, J.F.K. – there are even celebrity gravesite tours) or just for themselves (Arlington National Cemetery, the “Cities of the Dead” in New Orleans). Many reflect a time period, place, and culture. My father-in-law’s ashes are buried at Colney Wood Natural Burial Park, one of a growing number of natural burial parks in Europe (we’ve got a few in the U.S., too – see The Centre for Natural Burial for more information and lists of sites). Not a religious man, he did not want his remains to be buried in a church graveyard; but my family wanted to have a place we could visit – a beautiful place that he would have liked to walk in and that we would be comforted by visiting. Colney Wood is just that: A lovely forest that is also a cemetery. We chose a spot under a majestic multi-trunk chestnut tree (two images, below), and we continue to take comfort from the place.

As for me, I’ve got a plot picked out in the small town where I grew up. It’s a rural spot, surrounded by trees and grass and old New England stone walls. I’m hoping it’ll be a long time until my relatives have to think about that, but there’s comfort in knowing that when the time comes, they’ll be able to wish me goodbye and visit me in a landscape that continues to give solace even after I’m gone.

Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture, 2009 – Hot Off the Press!


Well, they’ve gone and done it again. The American Horticultural Therapy Association has published another great volume of the Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture. I swear, the journal alone makes the annual membership at AHTA worthwhile. Some of the articles are very specific to horticultural therapy (no big surprise there), but many of them are broad enough to pertain to the work that landscape architects and other designers do. I think any self-respecting healthcare-focused landscape designer/architect should also be a member of AHTA.


Here are some of the articles in this year’s issue (Volume XIX):

“Integrating Horticulture into the Vocational Rehabilitation Process of Individuals with Fatigue, Chronic Fatigue, and Burnout: A Theoretical Model.”

“Survey of Hort. Therapy Programs in Tennessee.”

“It’s More Than Seeing Green: Exploring the Senses Through Gardening.”

“A New Model for Hort. Therapy Documentation in a Clinical Setting.”

“A Theoretical Perspective for Using Hort. Therapy with Children.”

And then there are the 23 AHTA Annual Conference Abstracts from 2008, many of them compelling enough to make me want to contact the authors. And building on the last blog post about the importance of PLAY, many of these articles and abstracts have to do with connecting children and teenagers with nature. Good stuff!