by Karin Breuer

Created on: May 12, 2009

Emotional Healing Through Gardening

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the groundtrees that were pleasant to the eye and good for food. Genesis 2:8-9a (NIV). Since the beginning of time we have been spiritually linked to nature. While for much of the history of mankind, our lives revolved around the cycle of planting, tending and harvesting, the advent of cities, cramped living arrangements and often lack of green spaces provided therapists with the opportunity to study the effects of introducing gardens as part of a healing process.

In the shadows of the soaring skyscrapers of Tokyo stands a little house. Sunlight touches the roof of the house for less than an hour a day. In front of the house there is a little bench where the old man sits for a brief space of time, satisfied with the work of his handsa serene garden of vegetables, flowers and shrubs that are, like he is at this moment, oblivious of the city around him.

Today, therapeutic gardens have become part of rehabilitative medicine both for physical and psychological rehabilitation. Psychologists as well as physical therapists have determined that there is a positive correlation between gardens and increased health. Raised bed gardens now provide physical and emotional relief for the elderly in residential nursing homes. Churches which were once surrounded by cemeteries carefully tended by families, now bereft of that function, are creating meditation and memorial gardens for the emotional and spiritual healing of their members. Pre-schoolers tend beans in little cups. War journalists, recording the horrors of war, capture on film the hope of peace in a picture of a small window box filled f bright flowers.

He went daily to visit his wife of 52 years.. He arrived just before lunch pulled up a chair beside he at the table. She would always smile and say: Hi, my name is Shirley. I don't remember if we have met before. He would tell her that they had met and were good friends. He had long given up trying to make her remember that they had been married. After lunch he would take to the garden and together they would work in the flower beds as they had done all their life and for that hour she would be herself again.

City planners and architects have learned that green spaces, parks, avenues of trees and curbside flower beds promote peace. People are drawn to city

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