Where Patients Grow More than Plants
When hospitalized patients at Duke Behavioral Health North Durham look out from the common area onto the outdoor terrace, their eyes are met with pops of vibrant color: purple pansies, orange snapdragons, yellow daffodils, and a variety of greenery. It’s a landscape they helped create through a therapeutic gardening program led by psychiatry residents and behavioral health staff, in partnership with staff from Sarah P. Duke Gardens.
The raised garden beds in the center’s two outdoor courtyards laid dormant after the building opened in 2021, until Sylvester H., a behavioral health technician and certified master gardener, began cultivating them — first on his own, and then occasionally with patients.
Before long, Sylvester's passion project evolved into a more structured program that’s become widely embraced and cherished by patients, with the help of several additional partners.
Psychiatry resident Molly Fessler, MD, received funding from the Duke Psychiatry Educational Seed Grant Program to expand the gardening initiative. Recreational therapist Belle D., MS, LRT, CTRS, developed facilitated activities to engage patients in planting, watering, and weeding. Psychiatry resident Christian Goodwin, MD, MPH, attended a Duke Gardens event, where he met Annabel Renwick, PhD, the curator of the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants — a chance encounter that sparked a thriving hospital-garden collaboration.
The gardens at the behavioral health center brighten the patients’ day, but there’s more to it than that: research shows that exposure to nature, and specifically gardening, can improve our mental health and well-being.
In a review of more than 950 studies examining the health effects of nature-based interventions, 98% of the studies reflected positive mental health outcomes such as improved mood, self-esteem, and self-confidence, as well as decreased mood disturbances, agitation, and behavioral problems.
Another review of 40 studies documented that gardening and horticultural therapy can reduce depression and anxiety symptoms, lower stress, and improve brain function.
Sylvester, Belle, Fessler, and Goodwin have seen some of these effects first-hand in their patients. Watch the video to see the garden spaces and learn more from the team about the initiative and the joy and healing it has brought to the patients.
Susan Gallagher is senior director of communications in the Office of Strategic Communications at the Duke University School of Medicine.
Photos by Eamon Queeney, assistant director of multimedia & creative in the Office of Strategic Communications at the Duke University School of Medicine.