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NEW MARKET, VIRGINIA, April 2, 2003: National Garden Month, observed in April, has taken “Celebrate the power of gardening” as this year’s theme. Aside from providing sustenance and beauty, gardens are restorative — they can transform lives, says Valerie Kelsey, president of the National Gardening Association. “You see it the most with inner-city kids. They can experience it by growing a single strawberry. It’s forceful,” says Kelsey. “You see it in prison gardening. It’s probably the first time in the inmates’ lives they’ve learned how to nurture something. It teaches responsibility.” Landscape designer Nicole Kistler formed most of her impressions about horticultural healing several years ago while a graduate student at the University of Washington. She wrote her master’s degree thesis around the design methods used for creating some rooftop gardens at the Cancer Lifeline Center in Seattle. “Patients were able to soothe their tensions. In the end, many were able to tell their stories. There was this huge metaphor for healing. They didn’t know what they were doing in many cases (with the gardening), but they overcame it.” Sanctuary gardens are being designed around hospices, churches, schools and jails, among other places. The catharsis provided by these often vest-pocket sanctuaries impact the healers as well as the afflicted, adds Author Eva Shaw.

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