In winter, they are obviously deserted. But as soon as they green up again, the visits flourish again. Under their foliage, near their shrubs and their flowerbeds, patients and their families but also the nursing staff find there a place of calm and rejuvenation. Enough to relieve, for a few hours at least, the weight of stress and anxiety.
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These “therapeutic gardens” have been deployed in France for several years within a hospital establishment, a reception center for disabled people, an addiction center or psychiatric care center or even a an establishment for the elderly. “There would be several hundred in France, believes Philippe Walch, landscaper, who chairs the French Nature and Health Garden Federation. But not all of them respond to the principle of a therapeutic garden, whose primary purpose is to alleviate the anxiety of vulnerable people. »
-Already in the Middle Ages, vegetable gardens and orchards were used in Paris hospitals to save money and keep “vagrants” busy. In the 17th century, they nestled in hospices and asylums, where their mission was to entertain the “mad and insane”. In the 19th century, pioneering psychiatric institutions in the United States and Canada integrated gardening activities into their care programs. A century later, these green spaces developed in Europe, during the First and Second World Wars, “for war wounded”relates Etienne Bourdon, researcher in the Education and Health Promotion laboratory at Sorbonne-Paris-Nord University.
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