Woodridge clients enjoy greenhouse effect tending to healing garden

By Special Contribution
Published: December 14, 2007

As they file past the nurse holding open the door leading to the secured greenhouse on the campus of Woodridge Hospital, four teenage patients’ expressions change.

“You can see the anticipation on their faces -- they light up as they come through the door,” said Van Cooper, Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA) patient-centered care coordinator. Cooper has set up an extensive greenhouse and outdoor gardens at Woodridge Hospital and has been welcoming both adult and adolescent patients into the uplifting area since September.

On a weekly basis, Cooper conducts “workshops” in which patients dig in the dirt, ask questions about the many plants in the greenhouse and, perhaps, simply look around outside at the living, growing area that has been set up to enhance their lives.

Cooper’s area of expertise is patient-centered care (PCC), which is part of the MSHA focus and mission. MSHA team members are guided through a PCC seminar that sets the philosophy and tone of the work of MSHA in all of its facilities. Cooper has helped organize required PCC seminars for team members as well as helped to create healing gardens at many MSHA facilities. All are designed to bring a special feeling to the care given – and received – through the work of MSHA.

At Woodridge, the adolescent and adult clients are invited to interact with dirt, flowers and herbs located in the greenhouse a couple of times a week. Cooper said, “They enjoy getting 'outside.’ They like coming out here in the sunshine. I can’t wait until it snows.”

Cooper, laughing and talking to the teenagers as he asks whether to set out more dirt and plastic pots for the students of this unique program, helps them create small arrangements of Christmas cactus and other plants to take back to their rooms. The cactus, coleus, rosemary, lavender, basil and peppermint blend their aromas as a recent class of adolescents listens to Cooper explain herbs’ origins and uses. As he suggests, they inhale the aromas of the plants, the dirt, the chocolate mint, pineapple mint and sage as they make holes in the dirt to plant. Cooper has been showing how to pot plants, what the names of plants are, telling their histories and mingling with patients and plants at the psychiatric facility long enough that he feels comfortable chatting with the patients and their supervisor about a little bit of everything.

A 31-year member of MSHA and its predecessor, Cooper counts the greenhouse and its contents, the design of a water pond donated by Sycamore Shoals Hospital (SSH), one of the MSHA facilities that also has a Healing Garden on its campus, a decorated gazebo given to Cooper’s project by Johnson City Specialty Hospital (JCSH), also an MSHA facility, and other living greenery as a special part of his life and work.

Like so many other projects that involve the nurture-and-nature approach, the Woodridge greenhouse idea has grown, just like its vast array of plants. It came about after Cooper had been sent to Chicago to learn how to set up healing gardens in all the MSHA facilities.

“[MSHA President and CEO Dennis Vonderfecht] sent me to Chicago two years ago to obtain a certificate in healing garden design, a one-year-long project. When I took a sabbatical and a project was required, Mr. Vonderfecht had suggested a redesign of the healing gardens at Woodridge. I got together a Healing Garden Committee here that includes six-to-eight staff members.

"They were skeptical at first. Some wanted the greenhouse to be moved or even eliminated. We forged ahead and there’s great enthusiasm and support here. The patients love it, the staff and physicians love it. It’s a boost to come here and see everyone interact. Some staff members even come out here to eat lunch.”

The Healing Garden Committee includes Eva Adams, Vicki Bridger, Rose Carrier, Denise Clark, Julia Culligan, Diane Title, Laurie Street, Jeff Dice, Jenny Dice, Jody Shipley and Jeannie Mattson. “This committee has worked so hard,” Cooper said.

Cooper got together pots and dirt and helped build shelves for the greenhouse to tidy it up. “It got real emotional for me at times. It’s personal out here,” he said, as he looked through the glass roof at the lightly falling rain. He has brought some plants from home. The boxwoods outside the greenhouse are rooted cuttings from his grandmother’s boxwoods and staff members and their families have donated, worked on and planted iris.

Other MSHA team members, including Todd Doman who’s donated Shasta daisies for the project, and Bobbi Kahan who works in the Learning Resources Center of Organizational Development at JCMC and has donated plastic planting pots, enjoy hearing about the progress of the greenhouse project, Cooper said.

He is planning – along with about 12 adult patients and anywhere from 10-to-15 teens and even younger children – to put in a raised vegetable bed of tomatoes, onions and lettuce. “Someone suggested potatoes. I like potatoes,” he said, grinning. “We had about 25 out here one time. It was fun.”

Cooper said the project has been some of the “most challenging and fulfilling” work he’s done to date. “Some of the physicians said it wouldn’t work. I’m so happy that it has worked, though.” And he is more than willing to share its success, he said, because it makes people happy. “As they come and go, you can see healing taking place.”

MSHA facilities include Johnson City Medical Center, The Children’s Hospital at JCMC, North Side Hospital, Johnson City Specialty Hospital, James H. & Cecile C. Quillen Rehabilitation Hospital, Woodridge Hospital, a service of JCMC, all in Washington County, Tenn.; Sycamore Shoals Hospital, Carter County, Tenn.; Johnson County Community Hospital, Mountain City, Tenn.; Indian Path Medical Center and Indian Path Pavilion in Sullivan County; Tenn.; Smyth County Community Hospital in Smyth County, Va.; Norton Community Hospital, Norton, Va.; Dickenson Community Hospital, Clintwood, Va.; Blue Ridge Medical Management Corp. (operating the First Assist Urgent Care centers, ValuCare Clinics in Food City stores and numerous primary care offices) and Medical Center HomeCare and Hospice Services throughout the Tri-Cities region.