Healing Garden underway at MCDH

11/10/06

Something new and different in healthcare is being created at your coast hospital.  Emphasizing the importance of the environment’s therapeutic powers, a Healing Garden is soon to be a reality at MCDH, and the community has shown its enthusiastic support. 

Located on the Hospital’s campus just outside the Hematology-Oncology-Infusion Clinic and adjacent to the hospital’s Emergency Room entrance, the Healing Garden will offer a quiet sanctuary for patients, their visitors and hospital staff. 

Throughout history, gardens have been used to aid in the healing process and have proven beneficial to patients by lowering blood pressure, speeding the healing process and reducing pain, among other physical benefits.  The Healing Garden will showcase medicinal plants from which many chemotherapy drugs are derived.

The Healing Garden has been made possible entirely through community donations.  Local artist Shozo Sato designed the garden in the Japanese Zen style. A grant from the Community Foundation of Mendocino County was the catalyst to begin the effort, and many community donations have followed.  Major contributors of in-kind support include Matson Building Materials, Dirt Cheap, Alpha Concrete Pumping, Accumix, Rossi’s Building Materials, David Yeomans, David Duncan, Tom Reed and John Rochat, M.D.  Several individuals have also generously contributed funds.

If you’d like to help sponsor the Healing Garden, send your contribution to MCDH–Healing Garden, attention Gus Killion, 700 River Drive, Fort Bragg, CA 95437.  All donations are welcome, and those over $500 will be recognized on a permanent plaque within the Healing Garden.  Call Gus Killion at 961-4678 with questions.