Just listened to RadioGarden, Episode 1 hosted by the charming Andrew Keys wherein he shares time with the lovely Lynn Felici-Gallant who is moving – away from her garden.

•  •  •

Without a doubt, 1997 had me by the…

I was quite unsettled. Location: Tucson. 28 on the verge of 29 and everyday was opposite day. Sing with me: “This is not my house. This is not my beautiful wife. How did I get here?”

It was strongly suggested I take 90 days free. Unplug. Abandon ship. 90 days of freedom from the worry and turmoil that were the fungii of my personal life. Just put big decisions on hold. 90 days to let go of the pressures and demands orbiting. I was fortunate to have the luxury to “check out” for a whole 90. I took it, with little choice, at first. 90 days. To. Be. Just. Me.  It would be the first time I set the heavy weight of life and (overly) assumed responsibilities down. My God, I was carrying everything and everyone, but me.

I was a duck in the desert. The “Tucson 90” came shortly after I had uprooted (moved) my life in Oregon (abandoned plans and plants, mind you) to follow – wait for it – love.

Turns out, that *that* love had major root rot upon close examination (for all you plantees out there, associate *that* smell). During the Tucson 90, whilst in mucho emotional & spiritual pain, I ripped my gaze (okay, death stare) off of the crumbling, damn-near-non-existent-hard-for-me-to-accept-its-gone-ain’t-gonna-happen relationship, released control on the lever, leaped in utter faith, and went to work. Unplugged from what I couldn’t fix and physically plugged into what I could control.

I created a garden.

Sure. Why not? I had done so at 25 when my Dad died.

I would take a bare patch of landscape of sizable measure – a in a climate I knew absolutely zip-zero about – and enliven it, invest in it, make manifest the dreams I had for it. Design, irrigate, plant it. Undo and redo parts of it. Nurture, tend and learn from it. Make mistakes, high-center a ditch-which, puncture a main water line. Sweat. A lot.

Love it. Really, really love *it*. The garden was my “transitional object”. I was in recovery. It was my very own horticultural therapy.

•  •  •

Walk with me to a memory, ok? Corner of the Tucson yard, near the back gate. I’m planting a rosemary bush. I am preparing that soil so very well. Making that hole the most perfect hole. Setting that plant so carefully. Welcoming it. Tending. Loving. Giving. Nurturing. I recall thinking how caring for myself allowed me to care for other things and that these experiences are never separate, are mutually inclusive, really – me, care, others. Connected.

•  •  •

And I would find the unexpected in a moment of being coached by a friend on glueing irrigation pipe together: people actually went to school for this sort of design-build garden thing and got degrees and certificates in it. Really? No. Really? Yep, just down the street. Better yet, using the dial-up internet (’cause that’s what it was back then), I found people studying the nature-people connections, even calling spaces – healing gardens.

And at the UofA I would find a grad program in landscape architecture and a professor crazy enough to encourage my interest in “healing landscapes”.  I enrolled that lover-ly year of 1997, after my garden was completed and my 90 days over, and I moved again.

Abandoning, in part, yet another set of plans, figuratively and literally. 90 days were up. I needed to leave. Move from that sanctuary –  my haven.  Release. Turn the creation over to someone else. I know, your asking, “but wait, how could you?”

Let them find healing in the garden, perhaps.

•  •  •

I would say good bye to that Tucson garden, and find another Tucson garden to live out my grad school days. Not. Easy. But I was finished *there*. Letting death be a part of things allowed for the beginning of something else. You know, that moment in late fall, when faced with the decision of whether to cut the echinacea back or not.

Is it dormant enough? Not yet? Maybe so? Any seed left for the birds?

This middle place – the grey area – is not an easy place to hang. You’ve been there, you know those moments when an ending bumps up against a beginning. Yet eventually, the ending ends and beginning really begins. The cycle moves on. Its only natural. Thank goodness.

Only once did I stop by to peek through the fence to see how the Tucson garden was growing. (Dogs barked and I couldn’t really see much. And I was kinda trespassing.) It didn’t matter, and as you can imagine, I realized two things:

There would be other pieces of land in/on which to make special gardens, and that Tucson garden was alive in me and me in it.

•  •  •

A conduit now – the converted – an ambassadress I was – if I might humbly say, for others to find their own natural sanctuary after whatever “move”, transition, change had “uprooted” them; to inspire love and giving and tending and nurturing; to create spaces where people could experience connectedness, the seasons of their lives, cry, contribute, make “good”, be fee and play (even during tough times).  Safe places. Private, green, liberty-producing spaces.

The Tucson 90 brought about possibilities and endings: beauty of the garden living and sadness of relationships dying. Life, rooted. Understanding grew – beginning and ending were forever connected.

My Tucson garden taught me that.

My relationship would end. The garden would be passed to another. And my career practicing a different type of “social work” would begin. The Tucson 90 gave me the chance to make something, heal something(s), and find something to help you.

And so it *is* important that we move. That change comes. That life moves in us and through us. Plan and live on that speck of ground and make good of it for however long you have it. Its only natural, and it feels so good.

Can’t help but wonder of Lynn’s move and of her next garden.

Western Oregon in the spring. Ah.  Renewal. Life. Play. Greeeeeeeeeeennnnnnn.

•  •  •

•  •  •

So whatcha doing on Saturday (April 18)? 

Join me ’round the garden table. I’ll be giving a healing garden primer talk at Portland’s Smith & Hawken store — just in time for spring’s righteous renewal, planting, planning.

A healing garden primer? Yeah, there’s just so much to say and well, I will only have 30 minutes (this time)… so consider it a “healing garden talk appetizer“. [Stay tuned for other speaking gigs - that are more of a meal.]

Sheer yummy-let me be outside, finally-grow my own restorativeness:

“Unearthing Your Healing Garden Potential“

Time to demystify all the research and that design intel about healing gardens for hospitals, and set the goodness free for the everyday home dweller – a la “restorative gardens”. Picture a green halo… making more of the standard-lawn-couple trees-dots of shrubs-scenario — something like this:

…a sea of stress-relieving natural elements, harmonized together, reflecting your spirit, surrounding your home… 

•  •  •

Deets: April 18th 11 am Free

Smith & Hawken

26 NW 23rd Place

Portland, OR 97210

503-274-9561

(you’ll need to RSVP to Smith & Hawken)

All attendees will receive a 20% off coupon for the day and a free S&H gift… and Red Bird’s Restorative Garden Pocket Guide!

•  •  •

In the event you can’t make it (because you live in, well, Switzerland like groovy Caroline), this might be a welcomed resource for you: American Horticultural Therapy Association’s low-down on Healing Gardens — a helpful primer.

•  •  •

There’s magic in that there landscape – tap it – unearth it.

The plant treasure hunt (selecting, shopping for plants for my clients) part of my work is pure pleasure. So thrilling to find the right plants to round out a soulful design experience. I refer to this task as “picking the very best icing for your garden cake” (because I love cake) or “selecting the very best *friends* you’ll ever have” (because it is true).

What makes the plant treasure hunt even better is connecting with nursery people who’ve got soul – who really believe in the power of plants. Wholesale growers (plant caregivers, shall we say) who invest in plant healthcare and sound practice at their nurseries, leave me assured of the *sustainability* of these bright, beautiful symbols of hope and health.  Last week, while on treasure hunt, I had the pleasure of walking, talking and gazing at lovely *babies* at Cascadian Nurseries, Inc., a wholesale only nursery in Hillsboro, OR.  My tour was lead by Mr. Wholesale-Nursery-Wonderful, Jim Larson.  Guess you might say he is the plant nursery *pediatrician*. 

Whilst touring the “trees with European Artistry” we happened upon the espaliered flowing pears.  Now, I must say Cascadian had me at espaliered and though I was a bit too early to see bloom (given our weather this past winter, arggg), let me tell you, these babes are ladders to the heavens!  Officially fell in love with yet *another* tree. The loving care (and true artistry) for these trees was legible. There they stood, strong, aligned, ready for an imaginary climb. I shrieked (Jim jumped), ”Can you imagine what these look like when in bloom?!  How about in their glorious fall color?!” Of course he can, he takes care of them, silly. 

Tree Art

Ladders, calling my eyes (and  heart) to climb up, connecting with appreciation to larger thoughts, ideals, daydreams – of good life, good living, good health – ’cause that’s what quality plants do for us.

Plant nerd's stairway to heaven

“Like the apple, the pear has always had a strong connection with children, fertility and prosperity. But while the apple often appears in male-female customs concerning courtship and marriage, the pear tends to be associated solely with the female gender.”  The Meaning of Trees: Botany, History, Healing, Lore

In January of this year, I received a “tipping point” email from a new therapeutic garden advocate friend:   

Hello Annie, I am a senior Landscape Architecture student at the University of Georgia, and I am currently working on my senior project: a therapeutic horse back riding center in Baltimore that is wishing to expand their services to include a Horses for Heroes program.  This program focuses on therapy for veterans.  I am searching for information and/or example of veterans gardens and post traumatic stress.  Marguerite Koepke, my healing gardens professor, pointed me in your direction.  If you have any information or sources, I would really appreciate it. Thanks so much for your help.  – Samantha

You know, one of those emails that says: “Okay, its time.”

Time to make available the story behind and the growing list of therapeutic gardens at VA facilities that I have been collecting since 2005.  As mentioned in a previous post, while wearing my other hat, (Acer Institute LLC), I teamed up with co-conspirators Alee Karpf & Jack Carman to orchestrate a therapeutic garden conference & tour in 2005 at the Miami VA.

From this event came several inquires as to where and what types of “healing gardens” existed for vets and their families.  We didn’t know so we started to ask, and it is not clear how many “boomers” and/or Afghanistan/Iraq war veterans are currently benefiting from existing therapeutic gardens in VA facilities. At the time of organizing the list (2006), we didn’t have specific statistics of how many therapeutic gardens existed in the 154 VA medical centers, the 1300 “sites of care” nor other non-VA facilities serving veterans. However, through the work of this list, VA colleagues and contributors have noted that indeed veterans requiring VA care, are benefiting from these specifically & sensitively designed gardens and the associated programmed clinical activities, should they find such a garden at their VA facility.

•  •  •

So to you Samantha, other therapeutic garden advocates, our veterans and caregivers of veterans, here’s the story, another resource & list so far posted on Acer’s website (read, scroll, subscribe for the list, then click the download button). I share this resource with the hope that it will benefit many and that we will see more therapeutic gardens in VA facilities.  

•  •  •

You might ask, how can therapeutic gardens support the VA healthcare system and buffer the impending strain of services?  We know this for certain, that therapeutic gardens:

• Aid in clinical treatment (horticultural, occupational, recreational therapies) from injury and illness (e.g. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, physical disabilities) 

• Provide a positive distraction from illness and concerns 

• Reduce stress and blood pressure

• Aid in a more seamless transition from wartime duty in a home-like setting

• Normalize the environment; “de-medicalize” the setting, offer more “real life” application for treatment

• Improve mood, function and socialization, increase natural absorption of Vitamin D, and balance circadian rhythms.

•  •  •

Help grow the list.

Since Red Bird Design‘s parent company (a collaboratory called Acer Institute LLC) facilitated the Acer/ASLA/Miami VA event in 2005 with Design for Generations LLC, many inquiries have poured in from allied professionals (Horticultural, Occupational, Recreational Therapists, etc.) and advocates seeking help to create therapeutic gardens for Veterans – a most brilliant, cost-effective intervention closing the gap in services and dealing with a current and anticipated preponderance of need.  Check back this week, Acer will publish a growing list of therapeutic gardens at VA facilities.

How and where do therapeutic gardens and their associated therapies fit into the VA system?  What of the “exterior resources” at VA facilities?  There are “grounds” for a variety of services (recreational and physical rehab, talk therapy, etc.) in these untapped landscapes — they are potential venues of care. With minor alterations, these barren landscapes will become gardens of health, recovery, respite, hope for our older vets, our current vets and the new vets (not to mention families).  In these “healing gardens” vets and military families find more “real and home-like settings” to help with the transition “home”.   

Studies have demonstrated that a sensitively designed garden offers a “demedicalized” environment and provides clients/patients/residents a more comfortable and less stressful place to “be”. In short, when less stressed, better results are noted in “recovery” (Ulrich, 1984; Barnes, 1994).  When designed by those who are trained in the “collaborative therapeutic landscapes design approach” teaming with clinical staff, care givers and patients themselves, a therapeutic (healing) garden offers a more “real life” recovery situation because it is a garden, e.g., various “real life” surfaces to practice walking across with one’s new prosthetic device (leg, foot, etc.); surgery or stroke strength gain recovery by reaching/grasping/holding to pick tomatoes, hand water a plant, or pull a weed; orientation to time, place, situation, season through the use of plants for those experiencing mental health issues.  As Chief Psychologist Dr. Francis S. Gilbert of the VA Southern Oregon Rehabilitation Center & Clinics puts it, “In terms of therapy, this is the sort of activity that fulfills body, mind and spirit. It involves the actual work of keeping the garden up and there is a spiritual connection here from working in the ground and raising something.”  

Miami VA Hope Garden sign makes clear the purpose. Photo credit: Jack Carman, Design for Generations LLC.

Ah, what a difference a garden makes.

I have a dear friend, colleague, and Red Bird co-conspirator, Cairene MacDonald of Third Hand Works.  She regularly employs metaphors to help people (and she’s a Canna, according to This Garden is Illegal‘s quiz).  I take inspiration from her. 

I was out in the garden immediately following this week’s Master Gardener certification class. It was a “big” weekend. I pruned trees and shrubs with a heart filled with zest (new knowledge), compassion (for my plants and my previous mistakes) and motherly concern (did I prune correctly this time?). I looked over each plant, (yes, talking out loud because it helps) channelling the voice, silly jokes, and crazy hand motions of this week’s MG instructor, horticulture teacher, pruner extradionaire, Bob Nelson. I felt part artist and part surgeon pouring care over these pups of mine. The wonders of nature’s effects set in along with the application of the “pruning metaphor” in life.  

It has been confirmed, after this week’s teachings, that the various owners of this property, including my Beloved and me, have screwed up the pruning of the flowering cherry out front. (For the purposes of this post, pruning is defined as selective removal of plant parts; maintenance and appropriate care for the life and health of the plant.) The tree stays because Beloved’s mom planted it 30+ years ago, so no “one cut prune” here for sentimental reasons. It looks like heck; it has since I met my Beloved 7 years ago.  

hope for her yet

I have rallied – I have info (and hope) as to what’s going on with the tree and why/how we need to “work with” her.  Happy with the education I received: teachings of the what and then the why/how = big picture appreciation and then the motivation (and empowerment) to act responsibly – sustainably.  

For the record, we (the collective) have made the rookie pruning mistakes:  

whoops 1:  habitually pruned hard in the dormant period which got us (and the tree) a heck of a lot of vigorous upright growth with little spring bloom (picture your hair on end with static electricity), 

whoops 2: we cut the “water sprouts” rather than waiting to “pop” them out once they reached for 2 – 4″ growth (so we now have double the emergence of water sprouts x 7 years because we stimulated the buds with our cuts each year, each cut),

whoops 3:  left nubs where we (and others) didn’t cut to the collar nor follow the mirror image of the bark protection ridge,

nubs, stubs, shoots

whoops 4:  topping (my stomach turns as I type this word) done by previous owners, 

and, drum roll please,

whoops 5: wound treatment to “make the tree feel better and heal”. Those before us didn’t know that more and more research shows that wound treatment actually traps moisture in which leads to disease problems and stymies the tree’s natural branch protection boundary (chemicals to deal with a cut).  A Bob Nelson-ism for you:  

Plants are generating systems – they don’t heal. Animals are re-generating systems, so when we have a wound and treat it, we heal. Plants don’t heal, they respond. 

—–

And now for the metaphor:  

This activity & education has me thinking about how pruning parallels life – if we understood what was going on with our bodies, then we would know why/how to take care of (prune out) that which we needed to in order to sustain ourselves, our growth – so that we might act responsibly for and about our lives and our health. 

—–

I love gardening in the parallels -  between plant health and my health and lessons contained therein:  I left a couple of trees and shrubs because after the class I was reassured to wait for the right season. I trained some plants instead of pruning them – for life and strength. I cut to the collar on a few so that the right growth might happen. I dealt with codominant stems – competing vertical upright growth – and determined which was most appropriate for life and cut the other away.  Train, care, maintain — good rules to prune (live) by. 

As a “healing garden” advocate I’m down with the research that informs landscape design. Yet as a fellow gardener, your neighbor, a person, a spirit, I really “know” what gardening does for me — how it helps me, how it supports me, how I “heal” and grow from mistakes, how I restore.

Sometimes we make mistakes – in life &  in the garden – I don’t let this “possibility” stop me or keep me from trying new things in either realm. My garden is the best place to practice life, care, maintenance.  Spring and summer plant responses will provide me “feedback” of my pruning treatment and I patiently wait to learn more. 

Wanna learn more about pruning too?  Find Bob and other great garden allies at Clackamas Community College (the only PLANET accredited program in Oregon)- they have a great spring line up of short courses.  

Play along – have some fun – click on the snapdragon link down there on the right nav bar. Visit This Garden Is Illegal and answer the quiz.  And do tell, what flower are you?

[I know, I know, could change from day to day, season to season.]

Go on and bloom, will ya? That’s not illegal, now is it?  

[Me? Survey says:  Snapdragon and something about mischievousness...]

The beginning of the year, in the dark of winter and muffled by the way-too-much-snow, this little Red Bird designed a display garden entitled “Elements of Life” for landscape contractor client Earthworks Landscape Inc.  The essence of the design of “Elements of Life” honors stone, water, fire, earth, metal, wood with a Pacific NW twist.  This garden began its 5-day bloom yesterday for the 2009 Portland Home & Garden Show. This event and the intoxicating garden shows on tap for the next couple weeks, mark a rite & promise of spring.  A giddiness about blooming, growing, harvesting, creating, combined with rituals of picking flowers, lazing in the sun, walking on warm summer nights hits the air and is multiplied a thousand times over by the throngs of garden lovers that attend these shows.

Red Bird Design's "Elements of Life" for 2009 Portland Home and Garden Show

Do me a favor, run your hands across the “weeping” stone sentinels that mark the portal of the space — I call these rocks the “guardians” – as they are solid, poised, relentless in their watch over peace.  Who couldn’t use a couple of guardians of peace these days, huh? Cozy up a bit while gazing at the fire which “dances” in the rustic pots – the fire bowls. Do they mesmerize? Does the fire heat and captivate? Take a seat nearby the fire bowls on the stone benches – part of the retaining wall – “guardians” laying on their sides, shaded overhead by the canopy of early spring blooming trees. Gotcha now with a little “prospect and refuge” action and you didn’t even know it, did ya?

Stone Forest - the Guardian of Your Peace...

Display garden design is crazy, weird, delightful and an opportunity to express sentiments beyond the typical “marketing” or “sales” realm. Meaning: share goodness, information, inspiration, education, knowing smiles and nods.  (At least this is so for this little Red Bird.)  It is a pleasure to contribute to a sense of hope and the reliable ritual of spring’s renewal. So for those of you able to make the show, stop in and grab a momentary natural distraction (in therapeutic garden design terms). The display sits in the same spot as the 2008 “Restore Outdoors” display garden (C Hall, Space G11).

Come on in for Elements of Life

My belief is that you should feel a sense of sanctuary & inspiration in your own home – your outdoor “rooms”.  I want the unique goodness inherent in your out-of-doors to bloom – as an extension of the goodness inherent in you.

What will we find, tap, uncover that reveals your very own guardians of peace, your own essential elements to live? 

We have had freaky-deaky winter weather here in the Pac NW. “Record shattering”. “Amazing”. “Incredible artic blast event”. Many worry about their babies (plants).  

Hello fellow garden maniacs who refer to our plants as “babies”.  Nothing wrong with that, mind you. Plants are like family and good friends.

RBD clients have been in touch, concerned with the health of one particular plant – Phormium.  Ah, the beauty of this plant – and the varieties available! Yum, yum, the Phormiums.

Yum Yum, the Maori Maiden Phormium

And yikes! the down-right scariness of snow and ice damage. Eek!  They look like heck: split, flopped, droppy, weeping. “Are they dead? Pull them out? Cut them back? Will they need to be replaced? What do I do?”

Sad Phormium... don't worry.

WAIT.

Wait and see with all your plants.  Allow time for recovery – to see how amazing nature / plant / tree organisms will fair.  The experts have been called in.  

Take respite in a great podcast, from Bloomtown Nursery’s proprietress Darcy Daniels who interviews the great plant minds & wholesale suppliers at Xera Plants for true blue flax diagnosis, good news, and fantastic information to soothe (and care for) the Phormium lover’s winter damage and recovery anxieties. And RBD clients, good news! RBD is in love with the variety Maori Maiden —  it finds a home in many a garden design… this one can hang on in the lower temps.

So, WAIT. 

Most Phormiums will be back (with the right care & mucho compassion – take a listen to the podcast)!

How attached are you to food that grows well in your “native” landscape? (I use “native” as in your “native” land – where you say you are really from.) Here in the wondrous Willamette (rhymes with dammit) Valley, we are blessed with pretty much the “stick in the ground, keep it wet, it’ll sprout” soil (all relative to organic care, of course).  

I am deeply attached to local produce that my “native” land produces. In 1993, close friends threw me a “moving to west Texas (why?) party”.  Lisa, mixed berry pie master, made a pie I will never forget; so good (read: magical) that it was all too clear during a very short stint in a “foreign” land (with no berries), that I knew to return home asap… if only to have direct growing and picking access to Oregon berries.   

Of all the berries, which is your favorite?  Blue, Rasp, Straw, or Grape?  (Okay, I know that grape may not be considered a “berry”, but go with it.)  I love ‘em all, and am, admittedly, a little over the top crazy about Oregon berries.  (The only food I cared about for my wedding reception. Thank you cousin Mary Ann Z.)

Oregon Berry Admiration - go on & have some!

How lucky for me that Bernadine Strik, leading researcher who conducts extension educational programs for the Oregon commercial berry crop industries (training for small nursery growers), presented in MG incubator this week.  

The biggest-ever berry pie of information was served. Yum.  Ms. Bernadine is the author of a bounty of berry pubs for the home gardener. Yeah!  Thankfully a resource so that we might do better, live better, eat better via our home gardens — these pubs will help you know, select, prep, care and harvest. Berry, berry goodness for all to devour as we look forward to spring and summer and gardens that sustain us:

Blueberries – Growing Blueberries in Your Home Garden [B.C. Strik, March 2008]

Raspberries – Growing Raspberries in Your Home Garden [B.C. Strik, March 2008]

Strawberries – Growing Strawberries in Your Home Garden [B.C. Strik, March 2008]

Grapes – Growing Grapes in Your Home Garden [B.C. Strik, June 2006]

Need help sorting through? Berry confused? Desire the ability to forage in your backyard? Contact me, tweet me on twitter and we’ll find the right plant / right place for your garden, ’cause ya know I want you to thrive (& have loads of berry pie).