Garden uses nature to aid mind and body
Author: Emily Matchar; Staff Writer CHAPEL HILL — The patio at the Shepherd House assisted living home used to look out onto a blank, grassy hill. Now the hill is dotted with lavender butterfly bushes, and the patio has an above-ground fish pond and garden tables planted with herbs and flowers. A stone fountain burbles outside the Alzheimer’s care unit.
“We look at [the plants] every morning,” said resident Bernice Whitefield, 83. “We say, ‘They’re growing! They’re growing!’ ”
The new gardens are a community service project by students of a Morrisville-based leadership program.
Sixteen students from the Legacy Center, which offers a number of self-growth workshops, came up with the idea as part of their advanced workshop, in which they are expected to work in groups to complete a community service project.
Almost 50 seventh- and eighth-graders from Culbreth Middle School in Chapel Hill also contributed by creating handmade ceramic garden art.
“Oh, this is so cool!” exclaimed Anna Gachechiladze, 13, as she watched a volunteer hang a ceramic wind chime in the gazebo during a ribbon cutting ceremony Monday afternoon.
Shepherd House has 70 residents in its assisted living and Alzheimer’s care facilities on Smith Level Road.
“The residents here are our grandparents, our brothers, our sisters, our family,” said Nancy Travis, a Legacy Center student. The students spent a weekend in April planting the gardens, using $8,000 worth of plants and materials donated by local businesses.
Shepherd House activity director Joanne Donnelly said she was overwhelmed after seeing the patio transformed.
“I cried,” she said. “I didn’t know how else to express myself.”
Studies have shown that access to green space can improve people’s mental as well as physical health.
Resident Flo Conklin, 74, said she comes out on that patio all the time, just to sit and think. “I think about a lot of things,” she said.
Before coming to Shepherd House, the Hillsborough native spent several months at an assisted-living facility in Durham that she described as “dark and dreary.” She likes Shepherd House so much that she took it upon herself to “supervise” the volunteers as they were planting the gardens.
“I love it,” she said, pushing a friend in a wheelchair around the finished patio. “Oh, this is heaven.”
Reprinted by permission Raleigh News and Observer