Landscape plays an important role in terms of a healthy environment and atmosphere. Indoor plants have been shown to be incredibly revitalising and have been examined for their health benefits all over the world. Plants have a lot more to offer than just looks. Interior gardening is not a new concept, but as technology advances, it is poised to become even more important to one’s health and well-being. We have easy access to living plants and nature in healing gardens. Plants in the interior have been shown to help in rehabilitation. In both research and policy, the impact of landscape on health is becoming more widely recognised.
Horticultural therapy plays a direct role in the landscape effect. Horticulture therapy (HT) is a method of using plants to enhance one’s body, mind, and soul by engaging in horticultural activities and increasing one’s awareness of the natural world. Horticultural therapy offers a variety of activities that can be done by people of all ages. Gardening boxes and surfaces can be made at varying levels to appeal to physically challenged or wheelchair-bound patients. Humans are said to be affected by the visible landscape in a variety of ways, including mental relaxation, mood rejuvenation, aesthetic appreciation, and health and well-being. It enhances one’s quality of life by bringing about psychological and physical improvements. Short-term recuperation from stress or mental tiredness, faster physical recovery from disease, and long-term overall improvement in patient health are the main positive effects of landscape on health. Patients who have a view of trees or the natural world through a window with their regular treatment use less medicine and recover faster than those who have a view of a wall. It dramatically decreases pain, increases comfort, enjoyment, and well-being, and reduces tension.
Indoor plants: For those considering the addition of indoor landscaping in a healthcare environment, it’s important to recognize how adding live plants can benefit any healthcare setting:
- Plants promote healing – Live plants can offer a place of peace and refuge, one shown to elevate a patient’s mood.
- Plants decrease stress – The addition of a healing garden or living wall will create a calming environment, one where guests, employees and patients alike can benefit from lower blood pressure and stress levels.
- Plants have even been shown to increase productivity for the staff who are at work in the hospital, too.
- Plants improve your overall sensory experience – Adding water features may mask hospital sound. Lush greenery can provide privacy, comfort, and even aid in directing visitors through the hospital.
Therapeutic indoor gardens: Therapeutic healing gardens are designed in a way to suit the requirements in an available space. A garden may be restricted to a small corner or be designed to fill a large atrium. In both cases, the vibrant growing plantscape will produce a beneficial contribution. The cost of adding a healing garden may be considered a sustainable option for contributing value to a healthcare setting. Therapeutic interior landscaping offers a welcoming space to gather. It is also one suited to fundraising efforts. Hospital management may choose to commemorate donors with a tribute imprinted on a bench, stone, plaque or planter. These items can be carefully worked into a healing garden’s design.
Allergy-free Indoor Plants: Experts employ informed techniques to guarantee that the plants chosen for any design are a safe, healthy addition to the environment while building healing gardens in a hospital setting. Plants that are a perfect fit for your needs and the area you have available. Plants that do not emit pollen into the air are allergy-free. Choosing the correct blooming plants, such as a bromeliad, or closely monitoring non-blooming plants to ensure they develop safely without flowering, are both parts of allergy-free planting. Topdressing is frequently used in interior landscapes to protect plants.
Safe Sterile plant maintenance: Everything must be taken into account while creating an indoor healing garden. In live plants, use soil-free growth substrate whenever possible. Plants can survive in a sterilised, soil-less combination that is free of organic components that could attract pests or mould. When it comes to watering, sub-irrigation, a self-contained technology, is applied. This water-wicking mechanism guarantees that the plants get just the right amount of water when they need it. When genuine plants aren’t an option, realistic replica plants can be used to add to the space’s appeal. The addition of replica greenery to an area adds beauty and interest. It also has a cleaning and dusting option to assist keep a medical setting sterile and safe.
When it comes to caring for plants and establishing a healing atmosphere, quality and upkeep are crucial. As a result of better indoor plant and softscape management, the quality of the environment and atmosphere is immediately improved.
Healing Gardens are effective if they foster the following elements:
- Control: Patients must be aware that a garden exists nearby and that they should be able to access it and use the area in an active or passive manner.
- Social support: Users prefer spatially contained locations that allow them to socialise. It’s critical to plan for both small and large groups (such as those affiliated with hospital-sponsored programmes and large extended family visits). All considerations for social assistance, however, should not preclude rights to privacy (which undermines patient control).
- Exercise and physical movement Designs that allow for patient accessibility and freedom, as well as elements like walking circles, might encourage mild activity. Areas that allow for stress-relieving physical activity and play should be included for youngsters.
User Group-
Patients: The healthcare centre or the hospital shall be designed as per the patient’s psychological needs and physical needs, disabilities and the duration of their stay. Long term inpatients and outpatients will have different requirements as per their needs as compared to the short-term ones and their holistic treatment will be improved by providing access to gardens.
Visitors: A supportive and distracting environment is just as essential for people visiting their family, friends in the health care facility, because visiting patients can be salutary and traumatic and could be emotionally draining which is when healing gardens come into play by rejuvenating the mood and calming down the mental stability.
Staff: Outdoor spaces are especially important for healthcare staff, who spend most of their time in the facility and need designated and accessible areas removed from their daily activities, where the wander collect themselves and adjust to the stress of their work.
Despite having advanced medical treatments, gardens in the surrounding evidently prove to contribute a lot in healing patients in the most pure and natural way. As an architect, we must realize this fact and give equal importance to landscape and implement wherever necessary considering every possible scenario. Humanity is what helps the world survive. In recent years, however, there has been resurgence of interest in the contribution to healing provided by outdoor garden environments in healthcare facilities. Keeping up and using green spaces in hospital lowers the costs associated with recovery and also contributes positively to patient’s survival chances and quality of life during their stay.
Reference:
- Planterra. Available at https://www.citethisforme.com/cite/website/autocite.
- Betsy Severtsen. January 2006. Healing Gardens. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319508681_Healing_Gardens
