SFGH welcome banner during Acer Institute ASLA tour of San Francisco Therapeutic Gardens, 2007

Sometimes I feel like I am trapped in a game of telephone and I can’t get out.  Did you say healing garden? Therapeutic garden?  Hospital garden? Operator, there is static on the line.  

Hospital gardens are increasingly termed “healing gardens” (HG). Near daily Google Alerts cross my screen for every Tom, Dick and Harry hospital “Healing Garden” being unveiled, constructed, donated to, value engineered out, and so on. Glance back at those two words next to one another:  hospital and healing. Has HG become another trendy term on the marketing carnival ride along side “sustainable” or “green”? 

Hospital healing garden remains redundant based on presumptions that:

a) we as a civil society would only create hospital landscapes that support well-being (I hear the cynics giggling.);

and

b) we, as stewards of the natural environment (e.g., landscape architects / designers) do our jobs ethically and correctly. We apply evidenced-informed design principles which manifest landscapes that foster health / well-being.  Nothing more, nothing less.

What constitutes (e.g., forms, causes, compels, makes) the difference between

healing gardens, hospital gardens, and therapeutic gardens?  

Syntax?  

Something more dynamic, more soulful, more sustained?