What Is a Healing Garden

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more.
— John Burroughs, American naturalist and writer, (1837-1921)

The Healing Garden is a thoughtfully created environment that provides a variety of sensory experiences, and natural flora and fauna to help:

• facilitate connection to something outside the body — e.g., a sensory connection to nature
• invite awareness of an environment bigger than “the diagnosis,” which can help clients regain a sense of perspective and control

What should be included in a healing garden to make it a truly healing environment? 

Clare Cooper Marcus, an expert on healing gardens, provides clarification about what they really are: 

“The term 'healing garden' refers to a variety of garden features that have in common a consistent tendency to foster restoration from stress, as well as other positive impacts on patients, visitors, staff, and caretakers. To qualify as a 'garden,' the feature should contain prominent amounts of real nature . . . . to justify the label 'healing,' a garden should have therapeutic or beneficial effects on the great majority of its users.”