March 24, 2009
March 20, 2009
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'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.
March 14, 2009
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.
March 11, 2009
Did you know that there’s a National Institute for Play? (www.nifplay.org). How cool is that? There’s been a lot of talk lately about play: Its importance not only for early childhood development (which is very important), but for people – and animals, too – of all ages. The new book by Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughan called Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul has been getting a lot of press, and for good reason. We need play, and just as Richard Louv uncovered that kids are not getting outdoors enough in Last Child in the Woods, we are not playing enough, either. So, if we’re suffering from nature-deficit disorder and play-deficit disorder, wouldn’t the perfect antidote be some outdoor playtime?
March 8, 2009
It’s the third warm, sunny day here in the Hudson Valley, and it really feels like spring. Today I celebrated by cutting some stems from our giant forsythia hedge to force indoors. Even though forsythia and magnolia are three of the earliest spring-blooming shrubs (but later than witch hazel – see this post), we’ve still got a few weeks before they really burst into full glory. By taking cuttings and bringing them inside, you can trick trees and shrubs into thinking spring is further along, hence the term “forcing.” I actually could have done this weeks ago, but I always forget! You can force lots of other shrubs and trees, too, including azalea, flowering quince, pussywillow, witch hazel, serviceberry, redbud, rhododendron, beautybush, crabapple, and other fruit trees such as cherry, apricot, pear, and apple. To see some really gorgeous examples, check out this blog post from Habitually Chic: “Forcing Spring.”
March 6, 2009
March 3, 2009
February 26, 2009
February 23, 2009
The Darzi Report, advocating high quality services for people requiring care in the National Health Service, argues that patients should have “a greater degree of control and influence” over their care, “making services fit for everyone’s needs”, and “care that is personal to them”. Therapeutic Communities do exactly this, in a variety of settings.
February 19, 2009
Speaking of spring-blooming bulbs, the American Cancer Society‘s Daffodil Days program is now underway, through early March (exact dates vary by location). The ACS has been holding this particular fundraising campaign for over 35 years. Over the last 14 years, Daffodil Days has raised more than $240 million in gross revenue to support the ACS. Pretty cool, huh?
Why daffodils?
