Designing a healing garden for three patient populations based on research, theory, observation and interviews

This thesis explores types of healing gardens suited for three patient populations: dementia, catastrophic, and psychiatric. It addresses the features that need to be included for each of these patient populations, and why different features need to be emphasized for each type of patient. It presents historical information on healing gardens, including prior research, theory, and design methods, as well as conclusions the researcher reached by observing patient behavior in gardens, and by conducting focused interviews with patients and unstructured interviews with garden directors. The researcher examines the results of these efforts through the prism of theoretical structures offered by environmental psychologists and landscape designers. The researcher then creates a prototype garden for each of the three patient populations.