Hospital prescribes green space instead of ‘sterile clinical environment’
LOS ANGELES: If houseplants are good for your health, surely the same must be doubly true for those admitted to hospital.
Soon, patients, visitors, and staff at an Auckland hospital will have the chance to test this theory out, as a large-scale, indoor “Healing Garden” is being developed at the under-construction North Shore Hospital.
A fundraising campaign, Give a Bit of Green, has been started to fill the Auckland hospital’s new 400m² central atrium with more than 500 plants.
Tim Edmonds, chief executive of the Well Foundation – the official charity for North Shore Hospital, Waitākere Hospital, and community health services across West Auckland, North Shore and Rodney – says the project is an opportunity for the community to “come together and help shape our future hospital environment”.
“We know that being in a hospital can be a stressful experience, and hospitals are typically sterile, clinical environments, with limited access to nature,” he says. “Yet international research shows that green spaces in hospitals not only encourage relaxation and reduce stress for patients, visitors and healthcare workers, but can also help speed up recovery and improve clinical outcomes.”
Proponent Robyn Redford, whose husband Lindsay Crocker spent the last three weeks of his life in North Shore Hospital’s renal ward with pancreatic cancer, says he would have benefitted from such a space.
“Lindsay spent his last 23 days in the confines of Ward 2, which was in stark contrast to the home he left with the large garden he loved. The windows on Ward 2 are mostly too high for a patient to look out of and the views indifferent if they could,” Redford says.
“The wonderful renal specialists who cared for Lindsay strongly recommended we take him outside in a wheelchair to get some fresh air and a touch of nature. However, with cold and windy conditions and no nature close by, this was a challenge.”
She says her husband was a nature lover “who spent his life enjoying the outdoors”, and that his “last days would have been enriched” by being able to be wheeled into an indoor garden.
Edmonds says the charity needs to raise $1 million (of a $2 million total) to fund the garden.
“By donating you will enhance the wellbeing of everyone who steps foot in our new hospital building and leave a lasting legacy that will positively change the hospital experience for generations to come.”
People wanting to support it can do so at giveabitofgreen.co.nz.
The four-storey hospital complex is due to open in April 2024. It is expected to serve the wider Auckland region with eight state-of-the-art operating theatres, four new endoscopy suites and 150 in-patient beds across five medical and surgical wards.