Professional Documents
Culture Documents
S o l d i e r s
G a r d e n :
Hills and gardens will always be the haunts of him who seeks
to cultivate his original nature; fountains and rocks are a
constant joy to him who wanders whistling among them.
- Kuo Hsi
A Soldiers Garden
Contents
Section One: Ptsd, Nature And
Evidence Based Design
A Soldiers Garden:
Increasing Efficacy for Treatment of Returning
Veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
through Evidence Based Design in the Landscape
A new master plan for part of the VA Greater Los
Angeles Healthcare System West LA campus that
improves outcomes for patients, staff and visitors
through enhanced connection and use of the
hospital grounds.
Darin Lane Morris
A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the Professional Certificate in
Landscape Architecture
University of California Los Angeles, Extension
Site Analysis
16
20
Design Concepts
25
Acknowledgements:
A special thank you to my advisor Mark Billy for his inspiration
in keeping this thesis process going, and to my incredibly
patient and supportive wife, who is glad to have her husband
back now that thesis has come to completion. Additional
thanks to the community of healthcare garden designers and
horticultural and occupational therapists who have a wonderful
generosity of spirit in seeing this work grow. Also, much
gratitude to Mr. James Duvall, Chief of Government and Public
Affairs at the West LA VA, whose support in opening the doors
at the VA was immensely important to undertaking this thesis;
and finally to the VA staff and veterans who were able to make
invaluable contributions to this thesis.
A Soldiers Garden
Narrative
33
Bibliography
43
What is PTSD?
What is PTSD?
Stress
Endocrine System
Immune System
3. A pattern of increased arousal, as expressed by hypervigilance, irritability, memory and concentration problems, sleep disturbances, and an
exaggerated startle response.
Hyperarousal causes traumatized
people to become easily distressed by minor irritations. Their
perceptions confuse the present and the traumatic past. As a
consequence, traumatized people
react to many ordinary frustrations
as if they were traumatic events.
What is the Biophilia?
A Soldiers Garden
What is Biophilia?
History of Gardens in Healthcare
300 BC
900 AD
1750
Greeks: Aesclepius was the Greek God of Medicine and healing. Pilgrims of the cult flocked to
the Temples of Aesclepius that offered rites of
healing. The seeker was engaged at the temple in
an outdoors setting, where priests offered interpretation of dreams and prescribed cures for illness. Pilmgrims then likely were sent to the baths
at the temple to heal.
Mediveal Cloisture Garden: The first gothic infirmaries were run by monks for religious pilgrims
who sought refuge in the healing gardens of the
cloisture. The shaded loggia provided protection
from the elements and healing herbs and medical plants were grown in the center garden. The
outdoor loggia was a place of contemplation and
meditation.
Asylums at the Age of Enlightment: Philanthropy and medicine based on humanity, not
leeches, as well as the idealizations and romanticizing of nature ushered profound hospital reform.
Asylums were designed with great expanses of
planted grounds for patients to calm their minds
and heal within.
A Soldiers Garden
History of Gardens in Healthcare
?
1850
1950
20th Century Biological Determinism: Medical practice makes great leaps with technological
advances. However, hospitals become sterile
and efficient machines. Doctors are focused on
treating symptoms and curing the disease solely
at the biological level. Subsequently the garden
was forgotten, and designed out of our modern
day healthcare.
A Soldiers Garden
2050
10
21st Century: Medicine and Landscape
An Evolution in Medicine
Re-embracing nature as
the supportive armature
to health, treatment and
recovery.
Spirit
Nature
Body
Mind
21st
Century
Salutogentic Medicine:
Supporting health and
well-being is the priority,
over sole directive to treat
disease.
Late 20th
Century
A Soldiers Garden
Integrative Medicine:
Treat the whole person.
Recoginzes a spiritual
component.
Body
Mind
Psychoneuroimmunological
Medicine: The mind is
recognized to have direct
effect on the bodys
19th - 20th
century.
Allopathic Medicine:
Biological deterministic.
Treat symptom and disease
physiological systems.
Modern medicine realizes
that how people think effects
their health.
Body
If youre a landscape
architect, do you know
what these terms mean?
Site Plans
Site Inventory
Design Solution
Program
Design Concept
Site Potential
Working Drawing
Site Analysis
Contours
Specifications
Chief complaint
Treatment protocols
Prognosis
Disease
Infirmity
Diagnosis
Signs
Wellness
Homeostasis
Symptoms
Desired outcomes
Standard of Care
Heatlth
A Soldiers Garden
Evidence Based
Design
in Landscape for
Healthcare
11
21st Century: Medicine and Landscape
A+
B-
Control
Choice and Privacy. A hierarchy between private and public places offers choice that emowers
a patient to find his comfort zone. When healing, patients need to be empowered to engage or
disengage from other people. Density and opacity, or permeability of enclosure provides choice
for differing levels of engagement. Being able to choose privacy when needed and awareness of
options affords temporary escape from stressors. A healing patient is vulnerable, and being able
to make independent choices is empowering, and further relieves the burden of stress.
Social Support
A setting for social interaction for intimate and for group settings. Being in community with other
patients in group support, or being able to visit with friends and family, it is important to have
somewhere comfortable and somewhere private to go where they will not be interupted by the
other goings-on of the typically busy healthcare service. Social support reduces, dampens or
buffers the stress response. Social support settings require seating and an enclosed space.
A Soldiers Garden
12
A Therapeutic Pattern Language
Based on research conducted on more than 100 healthcare sites, including acute
care hospitals, hospices, and nursing homes, these sites were analyzed with a
number of Post Occupancy Evaluations, as performed by leaders in healthcare
design research, Claire Cooper Marcus and Marni Barnes. Their reseach in concert
with Dr. Roger Ulrich out of Texas A & M Universtiy has developed a foundation for
evidence based design in the landscape that correlates strongly to positive medical
outcomes in the integration of nature and landscape into medical care. From this
criteria the pattern language below was developed as guides to address the needs
of the landscape architect, stake holders and other contributers in understanding and
developing an evidence based therapeutic site design.
Physical Movement
and Excercise
Positive trip destinations encourage movement and engagement outdoors. By stimulating our
endocrinological system in a positive way, excercise reduces stress and alleviates or reduces
depression through the natural release of endorphins and other neurotransmitters.z
13
A Therapeutic Pattern Language
Access to Nature
Nature enables a person to capitalize on his biological pre-disposition to the nature response:
reduces endocrinological stressor enzymes and increases alpha response and relaxation.
Provides restoration to a positive psychological position. Being in a positive nature experience
lowers fear and anger, and creates positive feelings.
A Soldiers Garden
Plant-rich Landscape to
Hardscape ratio at 70/30
Garden spaces are most effective when plant rich and when the ratio of plant material to hardscape is 70 to 30. The goal is to reach a critical perception of being in nature. While a concrete
patio with a few potted plants may have some benefit, full benefit occurs when the user clearly
perceives himself within an environment dominated by the positive aspects of nature.
14
A Soldiers Garden
15
West LA VA - Project Site
SECTION TWO:
THE PROJECT SITE
VA Hospital Campus
in West Los Angeles
A Soldiers Garden
16
Site Analysis
VA Campus in West LA
The VA Campus occupies 387-acres, bordered by the 405 freeway to
the East, and is bisected by Wilshire Blvd. The campus employs 3,500
employees, and has more than 300 domiciliary beds for institutional
therapeutic residence. The West LA area is urban and dense, and is a direct
contrast to the expansive, unobstucted grounds of the VA. The thesis site is
focused on 15 acres on the North side of campus in the historical Brentwood
Hospital group of buildings.
A Soldiers Garden
Site Conditions
17
Site Analysis
Impassable Barrier
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18
Site Analysis
A Soldiers Garden
Let the tree canopy spill from the ridge onto the
thesis site, weaving past and through the domiciliaries and treatment center. This will create
opportunities for choice and gradations of private
and public space. It will also establish a stronger
connection to nature as well as a stronger connection to the Veterans Garden at the base of the
ridge.
19
Design Solution Concepts
Drawing the wildness and canopy of the ridge into the hospital
area will establish a connection to the Vetverans Garden and
create an armature for the supportive gardens in and around the
domiciliaries and treatment center.
20
Site Plan
Constellation of
Ramps
and Paths
Outdoor
Waiting Room
for Treatment
Center
Serenity Park
Parrot Rescue
Cafeteria and food services
Outdoor / Porch
Treatment
Rooms
ent
tm
207 nd Trea
a
ding
Buil iciliary my
r
Dom ation A
Salv
6
Building 20
Care
Community
ministration
nter and Ad
t
Treatmen Ce
Building 257
Domiciliary and Rehabilitation
New Directions
Grove and
Recreation
A Soldiers Garden
ry
ing 256Domicilia
Build
hiatric
Psyc Center
PTSD
Interstitial
Garden
Veteran
Residential
Courtyard
Backyard /
Wrap Around
Porch
Central Garden
21
Site Plan Detail
Program Details
Building 257 and 206
1. Maintain open turf
areas to allow for flexibility in large outdoor
programming and
gathering.
2. Below grade and at
grade indoor / outdoor
office and therapy
rooms. Extends
building interior into
outdoor garden.
Patio provides
privacy and fresh
air. Non-institutional
setting supports
open communication
between healthcare
providers and patients.
3. Planted shade trellis
for outdoor activities.
4. Back of house and
services.
5. Large tree canopies
provide cover and
shade on open turf.
Tree groupings provide visual interest for
prospect and refuge
views.
6. Shade structures
and small grove
provide cover for
visitors and staff
break areas at front
entrance.
7. Shade structure to
reduce heat gain on
building and to adjust
building perception to
pedestrian scale.
6
Building 20
Care
n
ity
un
m
Com
dministratio
enter and A
C
Treatment
7
5
2
8
8. Outdoor waiting
area at patient and
outreach intake.
9. Tree grid for shade
and privacy.
10. Decomposed granite pad. Weight lifting
and proposed site for
basketball half-court.
11. Seating areas
in interstitial and
public walks provide
opportunities to
enliven space and to
provide social support
for visitors, family, staff
and veterans.
11
10
Building 257
Domiciliary and Rehabilitation
New Directions
3
A Soldiers Garden
Program Details
Building 256
22
Plan Detail
ent
tm
207 nd Trea
g
n
i
a
d
Buil iciliary my
r
Dom ation A
Salv
2. Interstitial garden
to shade building, and
to provide space for
social support and
choice for resident
vets.
5. Seating areas
in interstitial and
public walks provide
opportunities to
enliven space and to
provide social support
for visitors, family, staff
and veterans.
6
3
6. Private patient
gardens for structured
therapy sessions.
Raised turf planter for
wheelchair transition
to turf. Trellis and
small tree screens
ry
ing 256Domicilia
Build
ic
r
t
hia
Psyc Center
S
T
P D
4
A Soldiers Garden
Program Details
Central Garden
3
7
23
Plan Detail
5. Transition garden
path and extension of
ridge canopy, connecting user to bridge
and tree boardwalk to
Veterans Garden and
Serentiy Park.
6. Seven circuit
labyrinth for directed
meditative walking
and visual and cultural
interest. Unique
opportunities become
talking points to
engage patients.
7. Circular walk and
circumambulatory
paths create center
and sense of
spaciousness.
A Soldiers Garden
24
Plan Detail
2. Series of Whisper
Dish stations for listening to birdsong in the
tree canopy.
3. Switchback path
engages the hillside
for walk through forest floor.
5. Mature eucalpytus
grove and wildlife
canopy on ridge.
A Soldiers Garden
4. Constellation of
elevated boardwalks
on piers takes user
into and through
tree canopy down to
Veterans Garden.
Boardwalk grade does
not exceed 5% and
can be traversed by
wheelchair.
25
Design Concepts
Cathedral in
the Eucalyptus:
Birdsong
Whisper Dish
Serenity Park
Located at the base of the ridge is Serenity Park. Serenity Park
is dedicated to veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder, who can come to work with formerly homeless, abandoned, or abused parrots. It is a symbiotic processs that, through
love and dedication, promotes healing for both the veteran and
the bird.
Homeless veterans returning from duty need to make a gradual
transition back into society and the work force. Working with the
parrots provides a stress-free, peaceful, healing environment.
26
Design Concepts
Curving Path
Plus Tree Makes
a Private Place.
A tree trunk on a
curvilinear path allows
for a personal space
beyond the trunk, out
of direct view from the
path of travel. Though
the ground plane
remains open, this
offers an opporunity
for personal space
with a bench, where
before there was none.
27
Design Concepts
Universal Access
Many out-patient and VA residential veterans
are disabled. Despite ADA compliance on the
campus, there are few if any garden or nature
experiences that afford any access to person
who is bound to a wheelchair. When designing,
allowing universal access to be a guiding principle
will foster gardens with compassion for all who
need them.
Sensory
Integration
In desiging therapeutic
garden space,
engaging all the
senses activates a
sync-ing response
that assists patients
to balance unstable
or volatile mental and
emotive states.
There is a calming
immediacy to putting
ones hand in water,
listening to chimes,
walking on crunching
leaves, or putting
ones hands in the soil
and planting a flower.
28
Design Concepts
Existing building faces offer minimum sun protection and no outdoor connection opportunities.
Windows are small, and views outdoors completely occluded by air conditioning units.
Design Concepts
Dividing Space
Proxemics and Process
0 to 18
Intimate
18 - 4
Personal
4 - 12
Social
Thumbnail sketches
were employed to
discover how the
grounds could be
turned into rooms and
spaces for the user
groups.v
12 >
Public
A Soldiers Garden
29
30
Design Concepts
Discovering a New VA
through Rendering
A Soldiers Garden
31
Design Concepts
A Soldiers Garden
32
A Soldiers Garden
33
Inspirations and Early Thoughts
SECTION THREE:
NARRATIVE ON
DISCOVERING
THE THESIS
EXPLORATION, WRITINGS
AND SITE RESEARCH
A Soldiers Garden
A Soldiers Garden
However, when kept away from this
sense of home and when feeling a need to be
there, we are instead made orphans. We become
vulnerable to forces that stress and harm. On
losing the connection to inner self, we become
homesick, we become ill. Uprooted, self-restoration becomes a surmounting challege.
When sick, home is a place of healing.
The journey back to the CentreThe return to
Centre is the journey home, back to the central
hearth. (J.C. Cooper).
Thereby, healing is the process of homecoming. It is a return to a wholeness of self, to reconnect when lost from this inmost person within.
34
Inspirations and Early Throughts
What is the place that fosters this process of homecoming? Where is the place that
supports a recovering patient to return to this
sense of home, to reconnect with self, as part
of the healing process?
Gardens, being and health have had a
long going intimate relationship in both western
and eastern recorded histories. In Judaic, Christian and Islamic religions, paradise is symbolized
as a garden. Buddha received his enlightment
under a Bo tree (Ficus religiosa). Native American belief sees the person, wildlife and landscape
connected at the deepest levels, where each is
one and shares and supports the same web of
existence. From D.A. Careys Hospice Inpatient
Environments: Compendium and Guidelines, For
the pantheist, montheist, or existentialist, nature
provides a symbolic realm for reflection up on
beauty, eternity, timeliness, and the mutabiltiy of
existence.
The first recorded restorative gardens in
the West were cloisture gardens during the Middle
Ages in Europe, where hospitals and monasteries
ministered to the sick and infirmed. The cloisture
garden, a walled inner courtyard, provided shelter,
sun and shade per the needs of the patients, in
an enclosed, safe setting.
Regarding an 11th century hospice in
Clairvaux, France, St. Bernard recorded:
Within this enclousre many and various
treesmake a veritable groveThe sick man
sits upon the green lawnhe is secure, hidden,
shaded from the heat of the day..;for the comfort of his pain, all kinds of grass are fragrant in
his nostrils. The lovely green of herb and tree
nourishes his eyesThe choir of painted birds
caresses his earsthe earth breathes with fruitfulneess, and the invalid himself with eyes, ears
and nostrils, drinks in the delights of colors, songs
and perfumes.
A Soldiers Garden
There have been revolutions in medicine.
The last sixty years have focused on biological
determinates of illness. Hospitals have become
sterile, efficient machines that addressed the
biological imperative well, but missed addressing wellness for the whole person. Gardens in
healthcare and recovery were scene as an extra;
their benefit less tangible, and so their presence
over time had been wholly designed out of the
modern healthcare environment. However, the
attention and research being given now are recultivating the garden back into modern healthcare.
35
Inspirations and Early Throughts
Gardens have been shown to aid in
clinical treatment (horticultural, occupational,
recreational therapies) from injury and illness (e.g.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, physical disabilities); provide a positive distraction from illness
and concerns; reduce stress and blood pressure;
aid in seamless transition from wartime duty in a
home-like setting; normalize the environment and
de- medicalize the setting; improve mood, function and socialization, increase natural absorption
of Vitamin D; and balance circadian rhythms.
A healing garden is a place, a process,
and their intertwining. (Barnes, Marcus) A therapeutic landscape provides a variety of experience
that enable the recovering patient to find the place
that feels most like home. The garden provides a
sanctuary for relief from stress for the patient, his
family and hospital staff. The garden provides a
place that fosters communication on terms by and
for those who need it. It is a safe place to vulnerable, to look within, to commune with the positive
and healing aspects of nature. It is the song of
birds, the rippling pattern of a brook, the scent
of herbs and flowers, and the cool green of leafy
trees and dappled shade. The garden is the passage way to homecoming.
Environmental Context
The West Los Angeles Department of
Veteran Affairs resides on a sprawling 322 acre
park like campus. It is an oasis of rolling hills,
Pre-WWII construction and mature Eucalyptus,
sitting amid more than 3,500 residents per West
LA square mile. As long as the day, it is surrounded by an inching centipede of red brake lights of
bumper to bumper traffic on Wilshire Blvd. and
the intimidable 405 freeway. Tens of thousands
pass by daily mostly unaware of the business of
the VA or its amazing grounds. It is a jewel hidden in the hay.
Despite its dense urbanscape and traffic,
West Los Angeles hosts some of the best climate
of the Los Angeles basin. Its westside mild, kept
in year long balance by the Pacific just five miles
West. Because of the VAs hill like topography,
its unobstructed elevations, as high as 125 feet
A Soldiers Garden
above street level, there is an easy going, uninterrupted breeze across much of the campus. The
Eucalyptus and Sycamore canopy are in constant
sway, always nodding, always inviting. Outside
on the street, it could be a hot, uncomfortable day,
but up into the VA, it is always pleasant. And if its
pleasant at the street, then the VA grounds can
even be heavenly.
Adjacent VA neighborhoods run from
swanky Bel Aire to the North, to an upscale apartment and condominium district of Brentwood to
the North and West; and then to a slightly marginal West LA neighborhood to the South, bordered by Santa Monica Blvd. The VA campus
is divided into a North Campus and South Campus by Wilshire Blvd. The eastern edge of the VA
is hardened by the impenetrable 405 freeway with
the only access though a nearly hidden tunnel
at Constitution Ave and Sepulveda Blvd.
Once inside the VA, it is a curving maze of small,
tangled roadways with more than 90 orthogonal
buildings that seem to be as though tossed onto
the grounds like a scattering of toothpicks. Some
follow contours. Some relate to eachother. But
there is no cohesive plan. There is little sense of
center or orientation. First time visitors can be
easily lost.
The hospital sits as a monolithic block
on the South campus. Adjacent are rolling hills
of manicured turf with a variety of mature trees
and palms. Its an extrordinary park setting next
to the insanely congested Wilshire Blvd. and the
36
Inspirations and Early Throughts
Walking the northern most part of the
campus feels like a step back into a time machine. Bones of former courtyards and gardens
connect long arcaded and stately 1930s nouvea
buildings. Some are sleek, architectural marvels,
harkening back to a days of growth and prospertiy
in the United States. Now they are closed due to
asbestos abatement.
The further Northmost reaches terminate at a secretive golf course that commands
37
Inspirations and Early Throughts
There are few signs announcing the Veterans Garden. To get there, youd have to know
they exist. Despite best efforts, publicity has
been short. The Veterans Garden is the oasis
within the oasis. It is a fully functioning garden
nursery with greenhouses, lath houses and growing grounds. It is home to the Serenity Park Bird
Sanctuary and an increasingly successful weekly
farmers market.
Walking through the Vets Garden I
completely forgot the urbanscape that surrounds
the VA. I was in the country side. There is no
sound of traffic, no signs of the city, no cars and
no tall buildings. Instead, tall trees stand happily
around. The grounds were lush with planting and
crops. A cut flower garden splashes color around,
whose bounty supply bouquets and arrangements for local restaurants and events. There is
a paradoxically large, small holdings area rotating
with seasonal crops. Its a minifarm in the city.
Planting and flower beds weave their way across
A Soldiers Garden
as five thousand men in a rambling colony of Victorian barracks surrounded by gardens, fileds and
wild ravines that streamed out of the mountains.
Prior to the Soldiers Home opening, a
thousand marched hundreds of miles to apply for
membership. The majority of the land the campus
is built upon was donated from rancho owned by
U.S. Senator John Percival Jones. There were
broad manicured avenues curved among evergreen trees and flower garderns. Members lived
in domicillaries designed in stick-and-shinglestyle
with attractive verandas overlooking the grounds.
Members tended orchards and grew lima
beans, vegetables and oats for the kitchen. They
kept livestock and a menagerie of other animals,
some for eating and some as pets, among them
kangaroo and cougar.
On Memorial Day, the soldiers would
align in their bristling blue uniforms with their
long grey bears and moustaches. This attacted
tourists, photographs and positive interaction with
the public. President McKinley paid his respects
38
Inspirations and Early Throughts
A Soldiers Garden
39
Inspirations and Early Throughts
WESTWOOD TIMELINE
1769 King Carlos III of Spain decided to found
a city in Alta (upper) California.
a.
Sends soldiers and monks to scope area.
b.
Explorer Gasper de Portola camped with
his group at a site near the present day UCLA
campus
1820 Don Maximo Alanis, a soldier in the Spanish Army becomes first property owner as one of
founders of Pueblo de Los Angeles.
1884 Rancho was passed along to several owners, eventually to John Wolfskill, a gold and land
entrepreneur (Wolfskill first to develop Escondido
Northwest of San Diego as a multi-crop land), at
$10 per acre.
a. Wolfskill leases land to barley farmers and uses land for sheep grazing, but despite
plans, fails to develop land further.
1919 Wolfskill family holds out for cash and eventually sells to Arthur Letts, founder of Broadway
and Bullocks department stores, for $2,000,000
cash.
a. Letts willed the ranch land to his daughter who
subsequently married into the Janss family, developers of Westwood.
b. Promote Westwood Village as western version
of Hollywood. Fox builds movie lot at Pico.
c. Janss subdivide and develop Westwood as
affordable housing, turning tracts of forty to sixty
acres into improved streets with sidewalks. No
single building contractor was allowed to erect
more than a smattering of homes to avoid monotony and to keep diversity of housing.
A Soldiers Garden
1930s 1960s
(1950s) Arnold Kirkeby turns out futher major
redevelopment to the Village and the acceleration
of commercial growth (goes unabated into the
1980s)
a. Westwood develops further as a movie theater
hotspot, and explodes in the 1970s.
1962 - San Diego Freeway opens. Sleepy little
Westwood no more.
1970s - High-rises invade Westwood Village
along with the traffic.
1980s Westwood high profile burns too bright,
attracts gangs, and shooting and crime incidents
sensationalized. Neighborhood councils pressure
to close up night life, and Westwood commercial
success goes south.
A Soldiers Garden
40
Inspirations and Early Throughts
Veterans and their families: There is a
mix of residential veterans who live full time at
the VA. They live there because they have either
physical or mental impairments that prevent them
the independence to live outside the grounds.
They need full time care. There are also vet residences who are there for short term stays while in
one of the drug rehabilitation programs.
There are also veterans who are hospital
in-patients who stay only in the hospital during
recovery. The Fisher Foundation is currently constructing short-term housing for vet families who
come to stay with their loved ones who require
longer term hospital stays during recovery and
rehabilitation from surgery.
And there are out-patient vets who are
there only for day treatment, who live off campus.
Some arrive daily for work in drug or psychiatric
treatment programs. Some are attending to medical treatment at the hospital.
The VA has a pain treatment center. This
is a magnet to many vets who have drug addition
I spent one morning interviewing Merle
Fishman who runs the Veterans Garden. She is
an occupational therapist and ceramic artist. The
VA Garden is a work therapy garden. The VA
Garden offers two main programs. A transitional
work program assists a veteran resume a life
that had been truncated, either due to physical
or mental illness, often a result of war. A longterm therapy pogram has no specific work goals
but offers a service pension for veterans who are
unable to work outside the VA due to physical,
cognitive, or mental impairments. The long term
therapy vets will be part of a community living arrangement or in section 8 housing.
The VA Garden is a combined Business
and Therapy Program. The VA provides the land,
electricity, water and services. But payroll for
vets who work the gardens is entirely funded by
horticultural sales of the products produced at the
VA garden.
41
Inspirations and Early Throughts
The VA Garden provides a variety of
tasks so there is always an occupational therapy
fit. It offers a catharsis of working physically, and
the discipline needed to show up for work. Green
house is worked by vets who can stand and work,
and who have physical difficulty getting down onto
the ground. Based on vet personalities, some will
sell flower arrangements at the farmers market or
microgreens to local restaurants.
Working in the VA Garden provides a
return home for many veterans who grew up in
rural areas and may have worked on farms in
their youth. Therapists getting down and working
the earth alongside the vets builds trust in sharing
activities and responsibilities.
Vets who can show willingness and pride
in their accomplishments as well as independence and reliability move on to groundskeeping
for the rest of the VA campus, which is supplied
with plant materials from the VA gardens. The VA
Gardens is a profound starting point for the work
therapy programs, but there is little direct work
done here for treatment of PTSD.
The physical beauty and isolation of the
VA Garden lends itself more so as psychiatric
treatment area. Merle said, Our veterans often
say, The voices dont come hre. The voices are
less here. It is a mini-eden. It offers familiarity
and nothing unexpectd. It is a physically controlled environment. An island.
In the back of the VA Garden the Serenity Park Bird Sanctuary takes in abandoned
pet birds. Large, open aviaries arranged in a
courtyard house makes an outdoor living room,
sheltered by tall tree canopies. Its like the zoo,
but up close and personal. It does not feel like an
institution but an outdoor living room. The sanctuary has seen great success is helping vets with
PTSD. Through interaction with the birds, caring
for them, and for the campanionship they provide,
many vets have started on strong paths to recovery. The therapeutical value of pet interaction is
well documented, as the bird sanctuary increases
the eden effect for the VA Garden.
The largest problem that the VA Garden
encounters is that vets want to stay. Not leaving
is the fantasy. After working here, whod want to
leave? posed Merle. Despite there being other
kinds of jobs in the world for the vets, there is a
great fear of change. It is clear to see how comfortable the vets could become in this work area.
Merle explained that she would love for
more people to visit and use the VA Garden.
Some staff from the hospital have discovered it,
and will come there for lunch. Merle would also
love for the public to visit and shop at the VA Garden. We are invisible! she exclaimed. Everything we print, say or do around here has a map
attached so people can find us.
The Veterans Garden is an amazing,
healing resource hidden within our urban fabric.
This thesis explores how this connection can be
opened to the benefit of the veterans it serves
and to the public that surrounds. Having a
compassionate, caring place in nature within the
confines of the city is an invaluable resource to
allv.
A Soldiers Garden
42
Inspirations and Early Throughts
43
Bibliogrpahy
Bibliography
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(Center for Environmental Structure Series)
Frumkin, Howard, MD, MPH, DrPH Healthy Places: Exploring the Evidence
September 2003, Vol 93, No. 9 | American Journal of Public Health
Hersen, Michel & Biaggio, Maryka Effective Brief Therapies, A clinicians Guide
Mihcel Hersen and Maryka Biaggio, Editors
School of Professional Psychology,
Pacific Univeristy, Forest Grove, Oregon
Marcus, Clare Cooper & Barnes, Marni, Editors
Healing Gardens: Therapeutic Benefits and Design Recommendations
(Wiley Series in Healthcare and Senior Living Design): 1988
Maller, Cecily & Townsend, Mardie & Pryor, Anitia & Brown, Peter & St. Leger, Lawrence, Editors.
Healthy nature healthy people: contact with nature as an upstream health promotion intervention
for populations
Health Promotion International, Vol. 21 No. 1
Mitrione, Steve M.D., Clare Apartments: Design and Evalution of a Therapeutic Landscape
for People Living with HIV Disease MLA Capstone Thesis, University of Minnesota, Dept. of
Landscape Architecture, 2006
VA/DoD CLINICAL PRACTICE GUIDELINE FOR THE
MANAGEMENT OF POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS
Department of Veterans Affairs & Department of Defense
Prepared by: THE MANAGEMENT OF POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS Working Group
With support from: The Office of Performance and Quality, VA, Washington, DC
& Quality Management Directorate, United States Army MEDCOM
& The External Peer Review Program
Contractor and Subcontractor:
West Virginia Medical Institute, Inc.
ACS Federal Healthcare, Inc.
Contract Number: V101(93)P-1633
January 2004
Version 1.0
Based on evidence reviewed until May, 2002
A Soldiers Garden