The Monument Health Hospital and Clinic in Custer, SD is set on the brow of a valley with borrowed views of pine forest and Black Hills beyond. Integrated into the Hospital and Clinic grounds is a healing garden, several PT / exercise loops, sculptural log play area, helipad, and staff patio.
The Delmer Brown Healing Garden is a central part of the philosophy of the hospital and clinic healing environment. The garden is an active space for gardening, for teaching the community about growing food and healthy eating, and for use by physical therapy patients to practice their exercises. It is a quiet space for staff, patients, and families to take a breath from the sometimes stressful moments that happen in hospitals. It is a play space to keep children busy in a welcoming and safe outdoor environment. It is a community space that anyone can volunteer for, add to, and enjoy any time of day or night.
Tallgrass designed the “bones” of the garden: a waterfall and a bubbling boulder water feature, a wing-shaped pergola, berms to separate uses and create privacy, raised bed planters for vegetable growing, and several types of spaces to gather from small intimate nooks to large patios with built in seating.
The garden was the brainchild of local physician and avid gardener Dr. Joy Falkenburg and one of her terminal patients, Delmer Brown, after whom the garden is named. The garden is the outward symbol of the “healing environment” philosophy of the health care provided at this facility; attending to the body, mind, and spirit. A project close to her heart, Dr. Joy and a team of volunteers continue to fill the garden and have added a playhouse for children, lights, and many perennials, vines, herbs, and vegetables.
As the welcome sign at the garden entrance quotes from John Muir – “Everybody need beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Natural may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike”.
Some photos courtesy of Dr Joy!