Nature’s Healing Power

In his essay titled “Why We Need Gardens,” neurologist and author, Oliver Sacks wrote: “I cannot say exactly how nature exerts its calming and organizing effects on our brains, but I have seen in my patients the restorative and healing powers of nature and gardens, even for those who are deeply disabled neurologically. In many cases, gardens and nature are more powerful than any medication.”

Sacks, who died of a rare cancer in August of 2015, explained how he was introduced to the wonder of gardens as a child. And, as a physician in New York City, he took his patients to visit gardens whenever he could, believing that, just like music, gardens were vital “therapy” for people living with chronic neurological diseases. What is it about nature that is so calming and reinvigorating? he wondered, recounting the time a friend with Tourette’s syndrome became calm and tic-free on a hike in the desert. And how is it that patients with advanced dementia or Alzheimer’s disease can’t remember how to do everyday things like tie their shoes. “But put them in front of a flower bed with some seedlings, and they will know exactly what to do. I have never seen such a patient plant something upside down,” Sacks recalled.

“Clearly, nature calls to something very deep in us,” he continued, explaining his belief that nature affects us deeply spiritually and emotionally, as well as physically and neurologically. Had I read that essay before his death, I might have written Dr. Sacks a letter saying that, as a longtime gardener and lover of long walks in the woods, I couldn’t agree more with what he said in that lovely bit of writing. (Which can be found in the posthumously-published collection, Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales.) I’m not sure how I developed biophilia, an urge to connect with living things and nature, which I suppose progressed over time into hortophilia, the desire to interact with, manage and tend nature. But I’ve got both Big Time. And I know a whole lot of other gardeners who would say they do too.

Like Sacks, I can’t precisely tell you how nature works its mojo on people, but I do remember the first time I saw it happen. I was in college and working nights and weekends at a women’s shelter in North Minneapolis. The shelter had once been a convent for nuns, so the narrow, tile-floored room I used as an “office” had probably once been a nun’s bedroom. Our country doesn’t care about people who are struggling with mental illness, so the underfunded shelter paid me, and several other young women, about $8 an hour to look after dozens of women of all ages who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and/or other serious mental health issues. Tucked away in their own narrow nunnery rooms upstairs, those women were also often dealing eating disorders, broken hearts, drug-and-alcohol addiction and abusive boyfriends who showed up to bang on the front door at all hours of the night.

My job was to listen, comfort and do my best to protect them from harm, which was usually self-inflicted. Fires were started. Wrists were cut. Toxic chemicals were swallowed. Eyes were glued shut with Super Glue. Minds can do terrible things to people when they don’t work right. I tried to make my office feel homey, hoping to provide even a brief respite from pain. One day, I brought in a few cuttings from my houseplants and put them on the window ledge. Within a week, those green leaves and vines poking out of thrift-store vases began catching women’s eyes. What is that? Could I have one of those?

I brought in more cuttings, filling the ledge up again and again with little vases as more women asked for plants to put in their rooms. Soon spider plants hung from the ceiling, and ivy and ferns crowded the top of my desk and file cabinets. As my stark office began to feel like an indoor garden, the women hung around longer. We still talked about medications, goals and treatment plans. But there was more—How often should I change the water? When should this go into a pot with dirt? Should I feed it? I imagine it was nice for them to not be the subject of conversation for once.

Horticulture therapists have long said that nature is essential to human health, and research increasingly appears to confirm that. Studies show that patients who have plants in their rooms often leave the hospital sooner than those who don’t. And patients who can see nature out the window while in the hospital seem to need fewer pain meds. Here’s what I saw at the women’s shelter all those years ago: Women often left a lot of their belongings behind when they moved on. But most of them took those little plants they were caring for. I wonder what Dr. Sacks would have made of that.