“It is the last one,” said Johnsy. “I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall today, and I shall die at the same time.” This is O.Henry helping his readers feel the character who is sick in deathbed in his book 'The Last Leaf', counting her days in relating to the leaves falling from the ivy vine that she sees from her bedroom window.
“Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how bad I was. It is wrong to want to die. I’ll try to eat now. But first bring me a looking-glass, so that I can see myself. And then I’ll sit up and watch you cook.” An hour later she said, “Sue, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.” This is the same Johnsy who was sure she would be dead when the last leaf falls. The long lost historical concept of looking into outdoors or green spaces is seeping its way through into the health care industry for a reconsideration how muchever wide and tall we make our buildings.
In the past week we have been gaining information about healing gardens and their importance and benefits in Health care design . We can see the steps taken by the health care industry to incorporate gardens and patient specific green spaces as a healing component in Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland and Rusk Institute of Rehabilitative Medicine in New York city (Hartig, 2006). Other than novels like The last leaf and the stories form our loved ones how a view helped them recover efficiently from their sickness, we also have substantial evidence collected by researchers like Roger Ulrich ; who have concluded that view to green spaces helps in the process of healing. Given there is available comparative data collection and analyses based on psychological and physiological measures, it is unarguable that views to nature aids in healing.
The fact that stress is a pervasive, well-documented, and very important health-related problem in hospitals implies major significance for the finding that restoration is the key benefit motivating persons to use gardens in healthcare facilities (Ulrich, 1999)
While most of the qualitative data are about the view to green spaces and the psychological effects of the same on patients, medical campuses around the world has started to explore to extend this healing ability of green spaces in physiological aspect as well. Below is a poster from the blog headlined ' If Only Singaporeans Stopped to Think'. The hospital campus design aims to create zones of landscape on the generous site that intends to be patient specific. This takes a step further from just providing views to integrating patient activities like meditation, physical therapy, exercise, leisure walking etc by designing them into zones encouraging those activities by specific landscape design. As similar to the empirical data on views to the nature aiding healing, further research and data collection on patient activities in healing gardens would further help to design these spaces in health care settings.
There was no empirical data that Johnsy survived the Pneumonia epidemic just because the last leaf never fell. There was no quantitative background for all the historical designs that integrated green spaces (Ulrich and parsons,1992) shaping human nature and lives. However, there is a great amount of data and analyses available for us to consider Healing gardens as a catalysis component in health care design.
References:
Essay: Healing gardens—places for nature in health care Hartig, Terry et al (2006).The Lancet , Volume 368 , S36 - S37
Ulrich, R.S. and R. Parsons. 1992. Influences of passive experiences with plants on individual well-being and health
Ulrich. 1999. Effects of gardens on health outcomes . Healing gardens Volume Issue Pages 27-86
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