The “Creative Conscious” Brings a Healing Touch to SPROUT

In many ways, today’s therapeutic landscape movement began with the work of  Professor Clare Cooper Marcus and Landscape Architect Marni Barnes, both UC Berkeley alumni. Their book, “Healing Gardens” is the benchmark text that introduced landscape architects and caregivers to the research and possibilities of outdoor spaces at medical facilities.

This book certainly had a profound effect on Chris Garcia, SPROUT’s newest designer. With Clare’s help, Chris earned a UC Berkeley fellowship grant to study healthcare gardens and campuses in California, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Ohio. Using Post-Occupancy Evaluation methods, Chris recorded user patterns, sketched and measured design features, and observed the programmatic applications of gardens in healthcare settings. He found an incredible diversity of landscape responses specific to acute care, children’s, and VA hospitals, burn and cancer centers, nursing homes, and holistic healthcare campuses. The best design responses involved collaborative efforts and personal relationships between the landscape architect, patients, and caregivers in programming, funding, and building therapeutic gardens for the long-term facilitation of better health outcomes. These lessons and the rewarding journey that fostered them brings Chris to SPROUT.

SPROUT Roy-Fisher Associates has a bright history of  working with healthcare facilities to plan, research, fund, build, and follow-up on therapeutic outdoor spaces. Chris, daubed SPROUT’s “Creative Conscious,” hopes that the lessons and personal experiences from an inspired journey will continually manifest themselves  into actual places where nature and people can facilitate the healing process.