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Medicinal gardens application and meaning
contents
- particularities
- Horticultural therapy
- Different target groups
- Special therapy gardens can be found at:
- Corporate and community gardens
- How does a healing garden help??
- What is to be considered?
- water sources
- shadow Set
- hygiene
The gardens do not serve as direct medicine, but support therapies and also reduce stress for those affected in a situation that puts a strain on them. Anyone who is admitted to a psychiatric ward because of a mental disorder, who suffers from a serious illness and therefore has to go to a clinic or who is no longer able to cope alone in old age and therefore moves to a retirement home, usually suffers from stress.
Spiritual happiness through medicinal gardens. Picture: emer - fotolia This stress slows down the cure of just the complaints that the sufferers are in the facility. Instead of curbing this stress with medication, many clinics today rely on medicinal gardens.
The health gardens are designed for different groups of sufferers: dementia patients, for example, help only slightly more diffused paths because they lose their orientation. The sidewalks should be kept dark so as not to dazzle the old patients. Flowers should arouse the memory of the patients to beautiful experiences. In addition, no poisonous plants should be in the garden for dementia, since they often take things in the mouth.
Therapeutic gardens are not meant to allow those affected to explore an "untapped wilderness". On the contrary, they should give people without full literacy the ability to move without exerting too much effort. That's why simple road networks, brochures and signs help them find their way around - with exact details of distances and places, ideally complemented by the level of physical difficulty of each walk.
particularities
For such a garden to promote health, it should meet the following conditions:
1) Have a clear design that appeals to different senses. Ambiguities, optical illusions, winding paths or abstract garden art are out of place here.
2) Access should be clearly visible and easily accessible.
3) The paths are easy and not to miss.
4) The space is open to encourage encounters and thus helps to communicate with others and to experience something together.
5) The garden contains at the same time intimate places where the afflicted can mourn, relax, think or have a private conversation. These can be pavilions, hedged areas with benches or groups of trees on a duck pond.
6) The garden should inspire those affected and open up cloudy thoughts, help them develop idols and set goals. Wood and stone sculptures, paintings but also music help.
Horticultural therapy
Therapy gardens help people with disabilities. Such ailments may be related to old age, to seniors, to illnesses, both transient and chronic, but also to people in acute crises and mental health problems.
A therapeutic garden is not tied to a specific therapy, but should be adapted to the target group: Depressed have different needs than people after heart surgery, teenagers with eating disorders expect other than seniors with a broken hip.
Such a garden is first and foremost a free space. Here, the victims, to whom their complaints make the independent movement impossible in society, can be "themselves".
What is a free space, not only differs in the individuals, but also in the target groups: In a senior's room, a therapy garden serves to stop; For people in the rehab clinic, he should enable those affected to be physically active. People with mental health problems take responsibility, take a poetic view of the environment, and take steps in the garden to live a normal life.
Work in the garden of a psychiatric facility, a retirement home or a clinic for people with physical disabilities promises success, in order to enable those affected to take an active part in a structured everyday life.
Studies have shown that people with dementia who work in gardens show significantly more interest in their environment, laugh more often, are more active and behave more peacefully than those affected without this possibility. They fall less often and sleep better.
For example, Geriatric Hospital Langenhagen has been supplementing its therapeutic spectrum since 1997 with a garden complex that caters to the needs of patients with physical, sensory and cognitive complaints.
Occupational therapists accompany those affected to examine whether they have regained lost abilities, but also how they compensate for permanent restrictions. They learn about new postures and find out about how they can design their own gardens for the disabled. They rehearse opportunities that make their job easier.
Not only do they learn in practice, they also relax and enjoy themselves when they engage in nature.
As a garden for people with disabilities, wheelchair users and handicapped people can move undisturbed. Normal beds, a slope and hedges also give the option to practice body movements.
In a greenhouse, those affected can enjoy plants in the cold months and train on the local ways to walk.
Different target groups
Seniors want to stay in the healing garden, observe, extend social contacts, engage in meaningful activities, awaken memories and withdraw - children have the need to discover, play, observe, sense and have a task.
Affected rehabilitation centers use the gardens to retire, reside, and seek therapy.
People with physical or mental disabilities perceive their senses, learn work processes, take responsibility and gain a sense of achievement.
Afflicted with "wellness ailments" who take a break, want to have time for themselves and relax.
Special therapy gardens can be found at:
Special education schools for children and adolescents, in kindergartens, occupational therapy facilities, institutions for the handicapped, institutions for the blind, psychotherapeutic centers and psychiatric hospitals, clinics for the seriously ill and rehabilitation for traumatized persons.
Corporate and community gardens
But companies also recognize the positive effect of gardens on the working environment. More and more businesses are planting courtyards and roofs, planting the entrances and balconies. Employers kill two birds with one stone: Employees feel better at work, and the positive atmosphere also affects their customers.
Community gardens are designed to break up the anonymity of big cities, deepen social contacts in the neighborhood, provide recreation, enable citizens to exercise, reduce crime and improve social and natural climate in the city.
Urban gardens provide a balance to the high stress levels. Picture: K.-U. Häßler - fotolia The potential for this is huge: brownfields, vacant lots, areas on federal highways and highways offer large areas to increase the green space in the cities. It does not have to be the "big hit", because leafy sidewalks, former tram stops, abandoned garden colonies and even traffic islands offer "invisible niches" to get involved.
In Hannover-Linden Nord, for example, there is such a garden near the leisure center Linden: people from the area plant their own handmade wooden boxes with various herbs, fruits and vegetables that they themselves consume.
The "district gardeners" meet here, exchange ideas, get to know each other and supplement their daily diet.
The community gardens also include the intercultural gardens, in which migrants in Germany literally take root. Germans and immigrants come into contact while they form the gardens together, they meet on neutral ground, because social hierarchies do not matter at first. Intercultural gardens thus promote integration.
A pioneering role is played by the Treatment Center for Torture Victims in Berlin. It established a garden on the former site of the Moabit Hospital and a rented small park.
Many of those affected are unable or unwilling to work in Germany because they do not have a residence permit and / or are so traumatized that having a regular job is difficult. However, many of them come from rural areas and they know how to order a garden.
On the one hand, this therapy garden thus builds on the abilities, memories, and "home feelings" of those affected, while at the same time providing a day structure and a meaningful activity that stresses the body. In the garden, those affected also harvest their own fruit, such as vegetables, which helps them to become more independent.
Most sufferers are much healthier mentally and physically since they get involved in gardening. In addition, they strengthen their self-confidence because they translate the knowledge and creative power of their culture into the new society.
The outpatient department for adults, the department for children and adolescents and also the housing association for women implement therapeutic work in the garden. For mourners there is also a memorial place.
How does a healing garden help??
People with mental disabilities feel less stigmatized by working with natural materials - it "does not feel like a therapy". Plants, soil and water, sun, wind and rain are "neutral" and help healing alone.
The gardening works firstly occupational therapy. During casting, sufferers practice directing one's hand, cultivating the plants, strengthening the muscles and loosening the earth, training the fingers.
Secondly, garden therapy has an enormous effect on the psyche. Terms such as "rooted" and "down to earth" are not derived by chance from the human-nature relationship. Gardening literally grounds the memories and symbolic world of mentally confused people and brings them to the ground of reality.
Experienced therapists help to bring symbols and metaphors into a meaningful context for those affected - without the supernatural practical jokes, as he has been fooling around in the esoteric scene.
Even "normal neurotics" helps working in their own garden, to structure their thoughts, to come out of the stagnation of ruminating and to solve creative problems. For uprooted people with mental disorders whose ideas spin around as fragments, such rooting is even more important.
Metaphors can be tied directly to a practice. Afflicted people, who are stuck in old life structures and are afraid to leave them behind, can train this mentally - weeding through weeds.
What "weed" I have in mind, what should be out. What should my "inner garden" look like, so that I feel well.
Planting trees and flowers serves as a work on the metaphor "take root". For people with mental health problems who have lost their "ground under their feet," a sensible way to step back into solid ground.
The garden is a neutral place. Affected persons in psychiatry, hospitals and nursing homes are burdened twice: they suffer from their illnesses, and they also suffer from the loss of their social environment and enter a new environment, which is defined by the disease. In the garden, they can get to know other people without sharing the "sickness" as an exclusive commonality. Celebrations in the park, walks with carers, etc. strengthen this understanding.
The victims find a meaningful task. Dependence is one of the biggest problems of people in homes and hospitals. They are cared for and feel their passive everyday life as meaningless. Anyone who takes responsibility for plants has a job - more than that, he is not only cared for, but is now also a carer.
Those affected also see the result of their efforts: trees are growing, flowers are blooming and shrubs are bearing fruit.
What is to be considered?
For wheelchair users, the floor should be easy to drive on and should not slip when wet. Benches should be laid out at shorter intervals than usual, so that people with walking difficulties can walk longer.
If the benches are to encourage communication, they need a distance that allows wheelchair ingress (to be in. The paths must be so wide that wheelchair inmates can use them, from 1.80m upwards.
water sources
For sick people, water is essential. At the same time, many of those affected forget to take water with them. Drinking water storage in the garden itself helps them; In addition, hose connections and water lines for hand washing should be present.
Water calms the senses. Image: NatureQualityPicture - fotolia The water points should also be usable for wheelchair users, so that they can put down and fill up watering cans, for example.
Water plays a big role in garden design: water inspires, it "cools the thoughts", it offers countless metaphors of healing: from the flow of life to the open sea. Fountains, canals, streams, ponds and even bird baths are part of a healing garden.
shadow Set
Shadow is not more important to the elderly, sick people and people with disabilities than people without discomfort - especially in the summer months. Artificial shade through umbrellas (on the benches) goes hand in hand with natural shadows through trees.
hygiene
The garden should have a handicapped accessible toilet near the entrance, for those affected like carers. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)