Seniors « Therapeutic Landscapes Network

Effect of Garden Walking on Elders with Depression

January 30, 2012 | by Naomi Sachs

One of our members, a hospice RN, sent me this interview with Dr. Ruth McCaffrey, DNP, Sharon B. Raddock Distinguished Professor in Holistic Nursing at Florida Atlantic University. It was originally published in the digest of the American Holistic Nurses Association.

How have you come to study garden walking for older adults with depression?
I have been working over the last three years on developing an evidence-based program using reflection during garden walking to increase life satisfaction and reduce depression. The work began as collaboration between the Morikami Japanese Museum and Gardens and myself. The Morikami has had many people write letters and tell them that the gardens had a healing quality and helped them in a time of great sadness or in a time when strength was needed. The garden designer has created several gardens in the Japanese healing traditions and uses the idea of nine healing elements in nature. We were able to apply for and receive a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to create a research study with three different interventions, individual reflective walking, guided imagery walking and a comparison group who had art therapy. From that work we developed a book for use in an individual reflective walking program through the garden with a group session at the beginning of the walks, after three weeks and again after six weeks. This program has proved to be very successful and popular…

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Environments for Aging 2012 conference – A lot to offer!

January 23, 2012 | by Naomi Sachs

Wow! I just looked at the full list of Session Descriptions for this year’s Environments for Aging conference (4/21 – 5/1/12 in Orlando, FL) and it looks amazing. I’m so encouraged that there are eight presentations that mention or focus on access to nature in the title and/or description. Definitely more than last year – a good sign! And I’m sure many of the other presentations will touch on this subject as well. I went to EFA last year, and I was impressed with the caliber of the speakers, presentations, and attendees. If you are interested in outdoor environments for seniors, this is THE conference to go to. Here’s the full conference agenda, here is the full list of session descriptions, and here’s a link to register.

Oh, and if you register by this Friday, 1/27, you get a significant early-bird discount.

Read on for details on the 8 session that I think will be of particular interest to our members…

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Therapeutic Gardens in San Diego – San Diego Hospice

November 7, 2011 | by Naomi Sachs

San Diego Hospice, pergola at entrance. Photo by Naomi Sachs

Before the official start of the ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architects) conference last week, I had the good fortune of attending a “meeting before the meeting” tour of several gardens at healthcare facilities in the San Diego area with the ASLA Healthcare and Therapeutic Design Professional Practice Network. Chris Garcia did an amazing job of planning the tour and coordinating the entire day. Kudos to Chris and to all of the good people who opened their doors and let us tromp through their facilities, asking millions of questions and taking lots of pictures.

In the next couple of blog posts, I’ll share some impressions and photos from our tour, in chronological order of what we visited.

No, this is not a luxury hotel, these are the rooms, w/ balconies, at the San Diego Hospice. Photo by Naomi Sachs

San Diego Hospice

Garden type: Hospice “tribute garden”
Designers: Wimmer, Yamada and Caughey
Built: 2000
Visiting: As this is a hospice, you should definitely call first if you’d like to visit.

The following is an excerpt from the article “Hospital Gardens That Help Heal,” by E’Louise Ondash, RN

Peggy Lee, RN, a staff nurse for 15 years at the Inpatient Care Center at San Diego Hospice, has no doubt that its Tribute Garden serves as a place where patients, families and staff can rest and renew.

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“Do care facilities care? Stats on the implementation of therapeutic landscapes.” Guest post by Tanya Goertzen

May 5, 2011 | by Naomi Sachs

Montgomery Place Retirement Community, Chicago, Illinois. Photo by Naomi Sachs

This guest blog post is by Tanya Goertzen, Principal of People Places. Tanya initially posed the question to the TLN Group on Land8Lounge, and then took the initiative to do some research of her own. This blog post is a result of that research.

Do care facilities care? Stats on the implementation of therapeutic landscapes

When planning to undertake a specialization like therapeutic design, the additional investment of education to get there is a big commitment. Keeping up to speed on current research and trends, conferences, publication reviews, etc. takes time and money. So, is it worth it? We may be passionate about what we do, but does our target market see the value? The answer is a resounding “sometimes,” but the good news is, it’s likely an emerging trend that is growing.

Although no one specific study answers the question, data on the use of design research can help paint a picture.

The Center for Health Design (CHD) conducted surveys[1] in 2009 and 2010 of design research in healthcare settings. In both years, approximately 33% of respondents indicated they always implemented healing gardens. Sounds great, but unfortunately the results are skewed too positively by limited sampling, and are not representative of the health care market as a whole. As a benchmark, the 2010 survey indicated 41.6% always used design research to make design decisions; quite high when compared with the 2010 Health Facilities Management survey[2], in which only 16% always used design research. The latter survey is probably more representative of general trends because of broader sampling.

What is trending positively is the occasional use of design research, and possibly implementation of healing gardens. The occasional use of design research increased increased in the HFM survey from 25% in 2008, to 40% in 2009, and 60% in 2010. What may be closer to reality is around 33% of projects implemented healing gardens occasionally in 2010; an increase of 6.9% from 2009. While the trending is positive, those numbers are indeed small.

Looking to the future, that could all change. If, for example, “sometimes” means 50% of the time, then 16.5% of projects implemented healing gardens in 2010. If the growth rate continues, then that would be 51% in 2015. Combine this with an aging population, and we could see a big increase in demand. In Canada alone, the number of seniors will more then double by 2036[3], and 3.4% (353 000) of those will likely live in seniors care facilities.[4]

A case can also be made that trends in therapeutic site design are not only represented by healing gardens, but also by trends in healing environments. A person’s outdoor experience of a facility is not just in gardens; wayfinding, loading, parking, waiting, socializing, exercising, etc., can all happen outside of gardens, and all influence stress reduction.[5] According to the CHD survey, the top feature being incorporated all of the time is healing environments that are nurturing, therapeutic, and reduce stress. All things, evidence suggests, supported by therapeutic landscapes. This seems to suggest that other members of the consultant design team, providers, vendors, and business developers may not understand that connection, so it remains up to the therapeutic site designer to educate, at least for the time being.

The future of therapeutic site design looks promising. No doubt, as the Center for Health Design continues its ground breaking work, and evidence-based design continues to grow, we can put aside the lofty guesswork above, and turn to better data.

Tanya Goertzen has been practicing site planning and design for 10 years, is a licensed member of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, and principal of People Places, a site planning and design firm for health care, educational and community places. She holds a Bachelor of Environmental Design and a Master of Landscape Architecture, and is the recipient of the Award of Excellence in the study of Landscape Architecture; the Mennonite Student Travel Scholarship for her graduate work on community settlement patterns; and a winning exhibitor in the B.C. Drawing on the Land Exhibition; and has been featured in Sitelines.

Many thanks to Tanya for this guest blog post. I would love to see some comments and good discussion about this. I’ll be following up next week with some more thoughts.

[1] http://www.healthdesign.org/chd/research

[2] http://www.hfmmagazine.com/hfmmagazine/html/HFMsurveys.html

[3] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/070227/dq070227b-eng.htm

[4] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/83-237-x/83-237-x2006001-eng.htm

[5] Healing Gardens, Therapeutic Benefits and Design Recommendations, Clare Cooper Marcus, New York Wiley, 1999.

Happy National Horticultural Therapy Week!

March 20, 2011 | by Naomi Sachs

Eastern redbud, Atlanta, GA, March 2011. Photo by Naomi Sachs

Greetings from Atlanta, GA! Environments for Aging started today (Sunday) and I flew in a couple days early to visit my 94-year-old great-aunt, Stefanie. She embodies a person who is aging joyfully, in a wonderful Continuing Care Retirement Community just outside of Atlanta – Park Springs, in Stone Mountain. But more on that another time. Today, I want to talk about National Horticultural Therapy Week, which started today.

Horticultural Therapy (HT) uses plants, gardens, and other aspects of nature to improve people’s social, spiritual, physical and emotional well-being. According to the American Horticultural Therapy Association (AHTA) website, it is “the engagement of a person in gardening-related activities, facilitated by a trained therapist, to achieve specific treatment goals.” And from Rebecca Haller, HTM, “Horticultural therapy is a professionally conducted client-centered treatment modality that utilizes horticulture activities to meet specific therapeutic or rehabilitative goals of its participants. The focus is to maximize social, cognitive, physical and/or psychological functioning and/or to enhance general health and wellness” (from the Horticultural Therapy Institute website).

The Therapeutic Landscapes Network has an HT page where you can find links to relevant organizations (including the American Horticultural Therapy Association, the Canadian HTA, and the German Association for Horticulture and Therapy, as well as the Horticultural Therapy Institute) and resources online and in print. The AHTA publishes a very fine peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture, and that alone is worth every penny of AHTA membership. Any designer or researcher involved in this area of the field should really be a member of this organization.

Which brings me to an announcement about AHTA’s fall conference, which will be in Asheville, NC from 10/21-10/23/2011. Call for submission is open until April 15 – have something you think would be interesting to horticultural therapist regarding HT, research, case studies, design, or work experience? Give it a shot! The conferences are always good for learning and networking. For more info, visit the AHTA website, www.ahta.org.

Today one of the tours at Environments for Aging was of Wesley Woods Center, a specialty geriatric care component of Emory Healthcare with a 64-acre campus with an excellent HT program. Because of schedule conflicts, I wasn’t be able to attend the group tour today (which I heard rave reviews about), but I will have the good fortune of getting a private tour with horticultural therapist (HTR) Kirk Hines on Wednesday afternoon. I’m looking forward to finally meeting Kirk in person, after many years of email correspondence, and to sharing what I learn on the blog.

So enjoy this week, National Horticultural Therapy week; take some time to learn about it, perhaps even take advantage of an event in your community or region being organized by AHTA or one of their many regional chapters.

And as always, I’ll be posting “live” from the Environments for Aging Conference on Monday and Tuesday via the TLN Facebook page (facebook.com/therapeuticlandscapes) and Twitter (@healinggarden).

Horticutural Therapy at Wesley Woods. Kirk Hines, HTR/Wesley Woods Hospital of Emoryhealthcare

Research Summary: “Investigating Walking Environments In and Around Assisted Living Facilities.”

December 20, 2010 | by Naomi Sachs

Walking is the most popular form of exercise for elderly people. Photo courtesy of Susan Rodiek.

Speaking of older adults (see our last post about Environments for Aging), a good article – “Investigating Walking Environments in and Around Assisted Living Facilities: A Facility Visit Study” by Zhipeng Lu – was published in the Summer 2010 issue of Health Environments Research & Design Journal (HERD). I wish I could provide a web link for you to access the free article, but alas, it’s only available to buy. So I’ll summarize the author’s points here.

At issue are the dueling needs of elderly people: The need for safety and the need for exercise and social connection. Lu states that “falls are the most frequent cause of injury-related morbidity and mortality among community-dwelling older people.” Falling is a true risk and needs to be avoided. But as he (and others he cites) argue, exercise and social connection are both critical for maintaining physical and emotional health. Careful consideration of location/neighborhood, as well as design of indoor and outdoor pathways, can both reduce risks and enable elderly people to live active, healthy lives.

Lu first makes a case for the benefits of exercise – in this case, walking – for elderly people (people 65 or older), and asserts that “the physical environment plays a role in promoting physical activity.” Since walking is the most preferred form of exercise among elderly people, it makes good sense to see what types of settings best promote frequent and safe walking.” The design of walkable ALF environments has become more important because frail older people are increasingly averse to nursing homes and seek a higher quality of life and greater independent living in an ALF.” An assisted living facility, or ALF, as defined by the Assisted Living Federation of America is “a long-term care option that combines housing, supportive services, and healthcare for mentally and physically frail individuals.”

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Environments for Aging Conference – Register now and save

December 15, 2010 | by Naomi Sachs

St. Francis Country House, Darby, PA. Photo courtesy of Jack Carman, Design for Generations

In the year 2000, there were 35 million older people (ages 65 and over) in the United States. In 2030, that number will be to 70 million. That’s a lot of millions. How are we going to prepare for this “gray tsunami”? One answer is designing environments that better serve an aging population, one that includes baby boomers who want to remain independent and active as they grow older.

Environments for Aging is the foremost conference on design of the built environment, including residential and long-term care, for older people. It will take place March 20-22, 2011 in Atlanta, GA. Attendees can earn up to 15 CEUs, and save up to $440, by registering before January 7th. Who should attend: Architects; owners; developers; facilities managers; design professionals; product manufacturers; government officials; gerontologists & other aging experts.

Therapeutic Landscapes Network folks will be especially interested in the following:

Tour of Wesley Woods Center, Emory University Hospital’s specialty geriatric component of Emory Healthcare. Located on a 64-acre woodland campus, Wesley Woods boasts walking trails, horticultural therapy and other ways to connect older adults with nature.
Walking and Independence – Design and Planning for Seniors, with presenter Zhe Wang (see Monday education sessions and scroll down for description)
Increasing Physical Activity through Access to Nature, with presenter Susan Rodiek (get the DVD series that this presentation will be based on! Read this TLN Blog post about it and use the special access code for a discount on the DVDs).

Read on for more information from the Environments for Aging website… (more…)

Upcoming Event: Movie Night at the Portland Memory Garden

August 4, 2010 | by Naomi Sachs

Senior Movie Night, a benefit for the Portland Memory Garden

Join us for a night out in the park!
Bring your friends, family, blanket and a picnic basket to enjoy live entertainment, free popcorn, and an outdoor movie.

Featuring “That’s Entertainment” with Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly and directed by Jack Haley Jr. as well as a resource fair, music, and raffle.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Resource Fair 5:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Opening Act: The Sounds of Rayvis (Elvis) 7:00 p.m.
Raffle drawings 7:45 p.m.
Movie starts at dusk (approximately 8:00 p.m.)

Where: Portland Memory Garden
SE 104th Ave & Powell Blvd
Portland, OR

This event is Disability Friendly. Bring dinner and drinks, blankets and/or chairs for seating and make this an “oldfashioned outdoor movie” event.

For more information, visit seniormovienight.com

To view Portland Parks & Recreation’s complete FREE FOR ALL Summer 2010 schedule, visit www.portlandonline.com/parks and click on the summer free for all icon! We hope to see you there!

Portland Memory Garden Landscape Plan

The Portland Memory Garden is located in Portland, Oregon off SE Powell at 104th Avenue in the southeast corner of Ed Benedict Park. This very special garden is open to the entire community, but was designed to meet the special needs of those with memory disorders (such as Alzheimer’s disease) and to provide respite for their caregivers. The garden was dedicated in May 2002 and is one of eight memory gardens in the U.S., and one of only two built on public land.

Hurrah! ‘Access to Nature for Older Adults’ Wins ASLA Award

June 17, 2010 | by Naomi Sachs

Photo by Susan Rodiek

The 2010 ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architects) Awards have been announced, and one of the winners is the excellent new DVD series, “Access to Nature for Older Adults: Promoting Health Through Landscape Design.” Yea! We’ve blogged about this DVD series before, and we’re so pleased that ASLA agrees that it’s a valuable educational and design tool. Here’s what the jury had to say:

“Many of the features that were found beneficial, if included in all landscape design activity, would result in superior design and experience for us all. Improving our interactions with our world and better mental health all around! Talks about landscape design specific to an older population, proving a point of the importance of landscape architects. It sets up a design hypothesis that is in need of proving. Everything it applies to older population also applies to everyone. The research has a much broader application than just the elderly population.”
—2010 Professional Awards Jury

And to celebrate, TLN members get a 15% discount off any or all three Access to Nature DVDs. You don’t even need to be an official TLN member (though we’d love it if you were: Join online – it’s free!). If you are a designer, or an administrator, or a health and human service provider, or an educator, or a student, or someone with parents or grandparents (hm, that would be everybody), you should buy this award-winning DVD series.

To order your Access to Nature DVDs with the 15% discount, visit the Access to Nature website, (www.accesstonature.org) and at the checkout, enter the promotional code TLNA2N. If for some reason that code doesn’t work, try TLNA2Na (same code but with a lower-case “a” at the end). The website is also chock-full of good information, so it’s a good one to bookmark.

This is actually the fourth award for Access to Nature series: It received the 2009 Environment + Design Award from CEAL – The Center for Excellence in Assisted Living, and an early prototype of the Access to Nature program also won the Active Place Design Competition award in product design from EDRA, the Environmental Design Research Association, and a Viewer’s choice award from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Congratulations again to Susan Rodiek and her team at Texas A & M University; keep up the good work, and thanks for extending the discount to the Therapeutic Landscapes Network!

Discount on DVDs – A Consolation Prize for Those of Us Who Can’t Attend the Design for Aging Conference

March 21, 2010 | by Naomi Sachs

I really wanted to get to the Design for Aging conference, which started today, but just couldn’t this year. If you are in the same boat, I have a consolation prize for you!

The Therapeutic Landscape Network has teamed up with Access to Nature to offer a 10% discount off of the excellent DVD series, “Access to Nature for Older Adults.”

Please visit this earlier post for a detailed (and glowing) description of this DVD series. It is an excellent new contribution to this field, and I wish that everyone would see it.

So to help with that, here’s the deal: Receive a 10% discount when you buy any or all of the Access to Nature DVDs. Just enter this promotional code in the checkout section on the Access to Nature website: TLNA2N.