Ground 18 – Summer 2012 – Health

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Landscape Architect Quarterly 06/

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Round Table Designing for Health Features Therapeutic Roots Landscapes that Heal CSLA/OALA Awards

Publication # 40026106

Summer 2012 Issue 18

Contents

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Up Front Information on the Ground Health:

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Round Table Designing for Health MODERATED BY NANCY CHATER, OALA

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Therapeutic Roots Redefining patient care through landscape TEXT BY DENISE PINTO

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Landscapes that Heal A selection of public and/or institutional healing landscapes in Ontario COMPILED BY ADRIENNE HALL AND ROB WALKOWIAK

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CSLA Awards

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OALA Awards

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Technical Corner Weed Control in Turfgrass TEXT BY TODD SMITH

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Notes A Miscellany of News and Events Artifact Green Immersion TEXT BY LORRAINE JOHNSON

Summer 2012 Issue 18

President’s Message

Editorial Board Message

President’s Message

Editorial Board Message

I am taking this opportunity to introduce myself as the new President of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects. I celebrate the unique position that we, as members, have in defining our profession through selfgovernance, as found in the OALA Statement of Purpose: “Landscape Architecture is the profession which applies artistic and scientific principles to the research, planning, design and management of both natural and built environments. Practitioners of this profession apply creative and technical skills, and scientific, cultural and political knowledge in the planned arrangement of natural and constructed elements on the land with a concern for the stewardship and conservation of natural, constructed and human resources. The resulting environments shall serve useful, aesthetic, safe and enjoyable purposes.”

(Approved by the OALA Council, January 17, 1984.)

The notion of health resonates throughout the field of landscape architecture. With the growing awareness of connections between access to nature and well being at the individual and community scale, we thought it was timely to explore the broad topic of health. Linking landscape and health is not new; Olmsted observed in the 19th century that experiencing or simply viewing nature reduces the stress of daily urban life. Even earlier, medieval hospitals were often built around a courtyard garden which was seen to have healthful benefits. A close association between landscape and nature brings our work right into the middle of ongoing and persuasive research about the impact of outdoor green space on mental and physical health. New research is being produced, as noted in Lorraine Johnson‘s review of the recent book Your Brain on Nature (see review on page 42).

Traditional landscape architecture includes a multitude of professional expressions only limited by the creativity and drive of our members. As a profession, we opted to manage our own affairs 43 years ago. It was through our governance model that we updated the Association’s Strategic Plan and, last year, we completed the first of a three-year implementation horizon. This plan is founded on our mission statement: “to promote, improve and advance the profession of landscape architecture and maintain standards of professional practice and conduct consistent with the need to serve and to protect the public interest.“

Moving from the scale of the garden to the scale of the park, streetscape, and open space networks, landscape architects play an important role in tandem with urban design to foster public health at the community level. Our Round Table participants discuss a range of practices with a focus on health at a variety of scales. To get out and experience a landscape designed with the intention of healing, the article “Landscapes that Heal: A selection of public and/or institutional healing landscapes in Ontario” provides a helpful guide to Ontario sites, many of which have been designed by OALA members. Denise Pinto visits the grounds of a former London asylum to explore the changes under way as the agricultural/garden features of the original healing landscape are being repurposed in an urban village redevelopment. Jennifer Mahoney profiles Shawn Gallaugher’s work as he forges a niche market in the design of outdoor gyms integrated within residential gardens. Promoting outdoor exercise is grounded in studies that have found that participants “who exercised in natural environments reported feeling more revitalized and energetic than their counterparts, with a decrease in feelings of tension, confusion, anger, and depression.”

We have defined a vision: “to advance landscape architects as recognized professionals and respected leaders in physical environment planning and design whose expertise contributes to creating healthy, safe and livable communities and sustainable landscapes.” And we have identified a key strategic direction: “to raise the profile of the Landscape Architecture Profession.”

We were pleased to address each of our five stated goals in 2011: #1: Build awareness of the value of Landscape Architects through increased marketing and communications to both internal and external audiences. #2: Create opportunities for Landscape Architecture professionals and protect the profession. #3: Create a government relations program that advocates for the Landscape Architecture profession. #4: Offer a vibrant continuing education/ professional development program. #5: Engage members and improve their perception of the value of the profession.

Moving forward, I encourage members to communicate your views, so that I can assist Council in ensuring our decisions on your behalf reflect your views. I would be pleased to hear from you.

JOANNE MORAN, OALA PRESIDENT@OALA.CA

Not all landscape practices are healthy, though, so Todd Smith’s article about a new generation of “bioherbicides” that are replacing the old toxic variety of weed killers is good news. What is a weed anyway? Smith advocates for a “collective ponder” about our attitude towards weeds in turf grass, a cultural question about biodiversity and health worth considering. You may want to get outside and stretch on the grass to ponder this issue of Ground—let us know what you come up with.

NANCY CHATER, OALA, AND ROB WALKOWIAK CO-CHAIRS, EDITORIAL BOARD

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Editor Lorraine Johnson

2012 OALA Governing Council

OALA Editorial Board Nancy Chater (co-chair) Vanessa Eickhoff Eric Gordon Jocelyn Hirtes Fung Lee (on maternity leave) Leslie Morton Kate Nelischer Denise Pinto Maili Sedore Todd Smith Netami Stuart Victoria Taylor Rob Walkowiak (co-chair)

President Joanne Moran

Art Direction/Design www.typotherapy.com

Councillors Alana Evers Jonathan Loschmann

Advertising Inquiries advertising@oala.ca 416.231.4181

Vice President Morteza Behrooz Treasurer Sarah Culp Secretary Doris Chee Past President Glenn O’Connor

Associate Councillor—Senior Jonathan Woodside

OALA

OALA

About

About the OALA

Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly is published by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects and provides an open forum for the exchange of ideas and information related to the profession of landscape architecture.

The Ontario Association of Landscape Architects works to promote and advance the profession of landscape architecture and maintain standards of professional practice consistent with the public interest. The OALA promotes public understanding of the profession and the advancement of the practice of landscape architecture. In support of the improvement and/or conservation of the natural, cultural, social and built environments, the OALA undertakes activities including promotion to governments, professionals and developers of the standards and benefits of landscape architecture.

Letters to the editor, article proposals, and feedback are encouraged. For submission guidelines, contact Ground at magazine@oala.ca. Ground reserves the right to edit all submissions. The views expressed in the magazine are those of the writers and not necessarily the views of the OALA and its Governing Council.

Ground Advisory Panel Upcoming Issues of Ground Ground 19 (Fall) Time Deadline for advertising space reservations: July 23, 2012

Cover Renderings of Bridgepoint Health Centre, Toronto. (Courtesy of Stantec Architecture/KPMB Architects, Planning, Design and Compliance Architects, HDR Architecture, Diamond Schmitt Architects, Design, Build, Finance and Maintain Architects.)

See page 20.

Associate Councillor—Junior Inna Olchovski

Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly is published four times a year by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects.

Appointed Educator University of Guelph Sean Kelly

Erratum:

University of Toronto Student Representative Todd Douglas

The photographs on pages 12, 13, and 17 of Ground 17 (Mobility issue) should have been credited to Metrolinx and VIVA. We regret the error.

Ontario Association of Landscape Architects 3 Church Street, Suite 407 Toronto, Ontario M5E 1M2 416.231.4181 www.oala.ca oala@oala.ca Copyright © 2012 by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects All rights reserved ISSN: 0847-3080 Canada Post Sales Product Agreement No. 40026106 Ground is printed on 100 percent post-consumer, processed chlorinefree paper that is FSC certified.

The paper is manufactured by Cascades in Canada with 100% postconsumer waste using biogas energy (methane from a landfill site) and is EcoLogo, FSC® and Processed Chlorine Free (PCF) certified.

Lay Councillor Linda Thorne Appointed Educator University of Toronto Elise Shelley

University of Guelph Student Representative Najib Najjar OALA Staff Registrar Linda MacLeod Administrator Aina Budrevics Coordinator Joanna Wilczynska

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Ground 20 (Winter) Chill Deadline for editorial proposals: August 31, 2012 Deadline for advertising space reservations: October 22, 2012

Andrew B. Anderson, BLA, MSc. World Heritage Management Landscape & Heritage Expert, Oman Botanic Garden Victoria Lister Carley, OALA, Victoria Lister Carley Landscape Architect, Toronto John Danahy, OALA, Associate Professor, University of Toronto George Dark, OALA, FCSLA, ASLA, Principal, Urban Strategies Inc., Toronto Katherine Dugmore, MCIP, RPP, Waterfront Project Manager, City of Thunder Bay Real Eguchi, OALA, Eguchi Associates Landscape Architects, Toronto Donna Hinde, OALA, Partner, The Planning Partnership, Toronto Ryan James, OALA, Landscape Architect, Peterborough Alissa North, OALA, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, Principal of North Design Office, Toronto Peter North, OALA, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, Principal of North Design Office, Toronto Cecelia Paine, OALA, FCSLA, FASLA, Professor and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, University of Guelph Nathan Perkins, MLA, PhD, ASLA, Associate Professor, University of Guelph Jim Vafiades, OALA, Senior Landscape Architect, Stantec, London

Up Front

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01 REDESIGNING AID

projects through education 04

Global population has exceeded the seven billion mark and, according to the World Bank, eighty percent of the world’s people— mostly in the developing world—face a severe lack of access to basic needs, development planning, and overall community organization. These are the people with the most to gain from well-designed landscapes, yet these are also the people who have the least access to them. Though there are many who would lend a hand, a key challenge lies in co-ordination. Humanitarian aid needs professionals who are able to lead and integrate multidisciplinary projects responding to health, food and water, shelter, and safety issues. Landscape architecture can contribute to the solution, yet at present the “market” for humanitarian aid exists without substantial involvement of the profession. This needs to change. The idea of “humanitarian landscape architecture” could be a critical asset in the world’s most disadvantaged places.

Ideally, humanitarian landscape architecture is a concept that should be worked into professional development, and introducing projects through education is the first step.

An example of a landscape architecturebased humanitarian project comes from the University of Guelph.

Up Front: Information on the Ground

Simbiosis 2010 was a collaboration of Canadian and Nicaraguan students, several NGOs, academics, professionals, government, and the community of Barrio Grenada. Over three weeks the students— both Canadian and Nicaraguan—lived in the community they were working in, alongside the people they were working for. The initial days gave the young designers a chance to explore and understand the

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In May 2010, a group of eleven University of Guelph landscape architecture students landed in Managua, Nicaragua, to take part in a ground-breaking development project: Simbiosis 2010. The intent of the project was to design and construct an urban park in Barrio Grenada, one of Managua’s many marginalized neighbourhoods and a place where community space was nearly nonexistent.

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neighbourhood and cultural context and the site itself—a community park that had been left undeveloped for more than twenty years.

During the first week, teams of students from both countries joined together to engage in the design of the park, engaging the community’s participation to understand their desires. A list of available recycled and donated materials provided the foundations for construction. Each day, students received feedback from community members, and critiques and evaluations of their designs from professionals and leaders. By the end of week one, each team presented their solutions to a panel consisting of the design 01/

This constructed park playgrond in Managua, Nicaragua, was designed and built by University of Guelph students working with local students and the community.

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Suzanne May and Larry Harder

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Park inauguration celebrations.

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Larry Harder

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Concept images.

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Suzanne May

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Mosaic of a Barrio concept park to street interface.

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David Duhan

Up Front

professionals and local community members, and a final design was chosen.

The seven acres of vegetable gardens also supply the correctional centre’s kitchen. “In season, we’re using food from the gardens daily in the facility’s meals,” says Stadey, noting that they plant “pretty much everything”—carrots, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and more, for a total of roughly sixty varieties.

Weeks two and three involved implementation. These final weeks brought the design to reality with the students and many members of the community working together to construct the park. The work was hard, but progress was incredible, and the design came to life. Barrio Grenada had its park.

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The three-week journey of Simbiosis 2010 not only created the park, but created a group of people who had grown as individuals. Each person involved gained remarkable experience working in a challenging environment. Designing an urban park may have been the goal, but a large part of the design process involved being able to communicate, collaborate, and dynamically respond to the needs of the community. Simbiosis 2010 became a catalyst for community revival and change.

Larry Harder, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Guelph and one of the founders of Simbiosis, summarizes the project’s success: “With the bringing together of students of design from two countries, a social enterprise company, NGOs, professionals, academics, government, and, above all, a motivated community, Simbiosis 2010 explored the role of landscape architecture in the developing world and demonstrated the power of collaboration to engage, empower, and transform a disadvantaged community in a way that was also transformative for each of the participants.”

Organizations such as Architecture for Humanity and Engineers Without Borders show how integral professions can be in humanitarian work. There is dramatic potential for landscape architects to become leaders given the spatial and site design needs of many in the world. The skills that landscape architects provide can be brought to the places that need them most.

TEXT BY JILLIAN BAILEY AND DAVID DUHAN, BLA GRADUATES (2012) OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH. THIS MANUSCRIPT WAS PREPARED AS PART OF THEIR FINAL COURSEWORK, WITH GUIDANCE AND EDITING

BY DR. ROBERT CORRY.

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HEALING GARDENS

growing food and skills The landscape of the Thunder Bay Correctional Centre has come full circle.

Before it became a medium-security facility for offenders sentenced to two years less a day, it was a working farm, and it has now returned to its roots. Here, inmates are involved in horticulture, growing food and aboriginal medicine plants as part of the centre’s greenhouse and garden program.

The facility, which sits on 1,000 acres of land, has approximately seven acres of vegetable gardens and another five acres of medicinal plants, all of which are planted and cared for by inmates. “This is a working program geared towards teaching inmates skills while also providing an environment grounded in horticultural therapy,” explains Sandy Stadey, supervisor of the program, who has worked at the centre for 29 years.

The garden project started in the spring of 2004 and, since then, close to 200 inmates have gone through the program. Each year, between 35,000 and 40,000 bedding plants are seeded by hand in the greenhouse and then donated to community gardens, nursing homes, schools, and other institutions in the area. Negotiations are under way for the correctional centre to start growing ornamental plants for Thunder Bay parks. “While it’s an in-prison program,” notes Stadey, “we’ve blended our program to make connections with the community.” Last year, pumpkins and squashes grown at the facility were donated to northern reserves, a particularly striking example of community outreach considering that approximately 80 percent of the inmates at the facility are aboriginal. “What they grew,” says Stadey, “they were able to send back to their home communities.”

Stadey and her husband are both organic farmers, and the gardens at the centre are based on organic principles. “Because we’re organic,” she explains, “we need a lot of compost.” Thus, in partnership with local farmers, who donate manure, more than 30,000 kilograms of compost are produced every year on-site. All of the kitchen and grounds waste at the facility is recycled in this way; any compost not needed for the garden is donated back to the community.

Along with vegetables and compost, the gardens serve an important spiritual role in the facility as well. With assistance from a Manitoulin Island elder, Stadey introduced the aboriginal practice of “Three Sisters” plantings—corn, squash, and beans—and medicinal beds of significant ceremonial plants such as sage, sweetgrass, and tobacco. In a “healing forest,” a tree is planted for every graduate of the garden program.

The therapeutic benefits of the work extend far beyond the garden, according to Stadey.

She recounts stories of inmates who have left the facility and found jobs in the horticultural industry, and notes that many speak about a newfound desire to grow food when they get out: “They say how good they feel about being healthy and contributing something, taking ownership of something.”

Perhaps the most powerful testimonial to the value of the program, though, is that Stadey, who also supervises inmates in the laundry in the winter months, has had phone calls from former inmates once they’ve left the correctional centre: “They’ve phoned me at the institution to ask how the pumpkins are doing. In 29 years, I’ve never had someone call to ask how the laundry’s doing…”

TEXT BY LORRAINE JOHNSON, AUTHOR OF CITY FARMER AND EDITOR OF GROUND.

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OUTDOOR GYM

designing for exercise Innovation often results from the combination or fusion of two different ideas to create something people just can’t live without.

Think of the “clock radio” or “mobile e-mail,” for example. Shawn Gallaugher, a landscape designer active in both Toronto and Muskoka, has combined his passions for landscape design and fitness to develop innovative landscapes that contribute to his clients’ physical and mental well being.

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With a growing practice in and around the Muskoka area, where he designs landscapes for a large number of healthconscious clients and professional athletes, Gallaugher discovered that many of his clients spent a significant portion of the day training throughout the summer months, often leaving the serenity of their cottages to exercise at a small local gym or in their basements. Being a fitness enthusiast himself, Gallaugher saw the opportunity to apply a form of bootcamp-style exercise circuit to the landscape, encouraging clients to train outdoors, on their own properties, while strengthening their connection to the land.

According to a study published in 2011 by the U.K.-based Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, in collaboration with the European Centre for Environment and Human Health, exercising in an outdoor open space provides a connection to nature and helps refresh one’s mental and physical health, increasing energy levels and satisfaction by a greater margin than indoor physical activity. Study participants who exercised in natural environments reported feeling more revitalized and energetic than their counterparts, with a decrease in

feelings of tension, confusion, anger, and depression. The study also revealed that participants reported greater enjoyment and felt more inclined to repeat the activity.

The gardens and landscapes Gallaugher designs don’t read like the outdoor gyms or equipment circuits that are becoming increasingly common in landscape architecture. His approach is unique in that natural features are introduced or taken advantage of to allow an exercise circuit to be performed in the landscape.

With his fitness background, Gallaugher first assesses his clients’ fitness level and attempts to understand their goals. The design of the fitness program and the landscape go hand in hand. The exercise programs are unique in that they are a direct response to topography and site conditions, allowing the landscape to be experienced on a completely different level.

Gallaugher’s clients report improved fitness and better results when exercising outdoors, as the landscape components allow for an endless combination of exercises and variations on the routines. Various levels of difficulty are integrated into the landscape design, making the workouts appropriate for people of all ages and fitness levels. The workouts cover a circuit over the property and typically include movement, stretching, and muscle conditioning. Some programs encompass the surrounding environment as well, such as hiking, cycling, walking, and running along local trails and roads.

Clients with lakeshore properties are able to incorporate swimming and paddling into their routines. Some properties present unique topographical features that can be integrated, such as a steep grade for cardio exercise or a rock cliff for climbing.

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Once Gallaugher has an exercise program for his client, the conceptual design process begins with the organization of landscape features to define an outdoor exercise circuit. For example, light bollards or a banded paving pattern establish distance markers for performing warm-up exercises. Paving materials and their spacing take the form of a ground ladder for stepping and jumping.

Posts and railings are used for stretching.

Accessory buildings or architectural features such as exposed beams may be used to attach ropes or resistance bands for armstrengthening exercises. Bars may also be attached to buildings, arbours, or trellises for dips, pull-ups, and other resistance exercises. Another of Gallaugher’s techniques involves designing retaining walls at differing heights to open the program up to various levels of challenge. These walls are used for running training, power training, and cardio training.

Gallaugher strongly believes that because the majority of people today live in urban areas, it is even more important for them to find ways to connect with the environment and get enough exercise. According to Gallaugher, there is the potential for outdoor open space within urbanized environments to effectively accommodate complete outdoor exercise programs. The key lies in designing spaces that are multifunctional, combining the aesthetic and healing properties of the landscape with elements of an outdoor “green gym.”

TEXT BY JENNIFER MAHONEY, A WRITER AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURAL INTERN.

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Pumpkins grown at the Thunder Bay Correctional Centre were donated to northern reserves.

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Sandy Stadey

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Shawn Gallaugher demonstrates exercises in the designed landscape.

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Bob Dunlop

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MODERATED BY NANCY CHATER, OALA BIOS/

NANCY CHATER, OALA, IS CO-CHAIR OF THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD AND AN ASSOCIATE WITH THE PLANNING PARTNERSHIP. JANE ELIGH-FERYN GRADUATED FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH WITH A MASTERS IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE IN 1986. SHE WORKED AS A PARKS PLANNER WITH METRO TORONTO PARKS FROM 1986 TO 1989, THEN AS A SENIOR CONSULTANT WITH ECOLOGISTICS LIMITED IN WATERLOO FROM 1989 TO 1996. SHE IS THE PRINCIPAL OF ELIGHFERYN LANDSCAPE PLANNING AND DESIGN, BASED IN STRATFORD, AND IS ACTIVE IN RESTORATION PROJECTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION. CURRENT PROJECTS INCLUDE WORK WITH HURON COUNTY SCHOOLS AND THE MASTER PLAN/ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION PLAN FOR THE HISTORIC FRYFOGEL TAVERN IN PERTH COUNTY. VIIVE KITTASK, OALA, COMPLETED A BACHELOR OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO. AN ASSOCIATE AT VERTECHS DESIGN INC. SINCE 2000, VIIVE HAS TWELVE YEARS OF EXPERIENCE WORKING ON A VARIETY OF PROJECTS IN THE FIELD OF HEALTHCARE, INCLUDING RESIDENTIAL-SCALE HEALING GARDENS, COMPLEX INSTITUTIONAL PROJECTS, AND COMMUNITY SETTINGS. THE FIRM’S GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF UNIVERSAL ACCESSIBILITY AND EXPOSURE TO NATURE CONTRIBUTING TO THE HEALTH AND WELL BEING OF ALL, WERE DEVELOPED FROM ORIGINAL RESEARCH. THESE PRINCIPLES VIIVE APPLIES TO ALL HER WORK. SHE HAS RECENTLY DIRECTED SIGNIFICANT COMMUNITY REVITALIZATION PROJECTS INCLUDING THE CENTRE FOR ADDICTION AND MENTAL HEALTH’S QUEEN STREET REDEVELOPMENT IN TORONTO. PAUL YOUNG, OALA, HAS MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN URBAN DESIGN, STREETSCAPE AND PARK DESIGN. HE IS THE PRINCIPAL OF PUBLIC SPACE WORKSHOP, A SMALL CONSULTING OFFICE SPECIALIZING IN PARTICIPATORY PLANNING AND DESIGN. THE WORK FOCUSES ON NEIGHBOURHOOD AND OPEN SPACE PLANNING, AND PLANNING FOR ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION. PAUL BELIEVES THAT SUSTAINABLE AND HEALTHY COMMUNITIES EMERGE FROM AN INCLUSIVE DESIGN PROCESS. HIS URBAN DESIGN EXPERIENCE IS COMPLEMENTED BY 14 YEARS OF WORKING IN HEALTH PROMOTION AT THE SOUTH RIVERDALE COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTRE IN TORONTO.

Nancy Chater (NC): I want to start by asking about your conceptual frameworks and what vocabulary you find useful to describe your approach to health, healing, and landscapes in your work. There are a number of terms being used in the literature about landscapes and health, such as biophilia, attention restoration theory, and nature contact. Do you relate to those terms?

Viive Kittask (VK): My approach has been shaped by working closely with the principals at Vertechs Design Inc., Mary Jane Lovering and Inese Bite. They conducted original research in the early 1980s to examine long-term care facilities and why the outdoor spaces at these facilities were not being utilized by the residents. Their research led to the development of a series of principles that have been implemented in all of the firm’s work for the past 31 years.

Mary Jane Lovering is also a physiotherapist and completed studies in gerontology. Her healthcare background together with landscape architecture has allowed us to address many of the needs of the various user groups throughout our projects.

NC: What are some of those principles or guidelines?

VK: Every project is addressed individually and we look at the specific user group and what their needs are. We want to create user-friendly environments that alleviate stress. Therapeutic landscapes are intended to accommodate all levels of ability and address problems or challenges associated with vision, hearing, mobility and cognitive impairments, and changes associated with the aging process. Principles include microclimate conditions such as shade, absence of wind and heat traps, avoidance of architectural barriers, and selection of appropriate site furniture. Design of wide walkways to accommodate two-way travel alleviates the concern of those unsteady on their feet. We create accessible environments that can be viewed from the indoors.

A strong integration between inside and outside is important, especially for those unable to get outdoors. Overall, we want to foster independence and create spaces that will motivate the residents to use the landscape for various activities.

NC: Paul, tell us about your work in terms of your approaches to health and healing.

Paul Young (PY): In terms of theoretical models, I borrow quite a bit from public

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health, which takes into account a broad range of factors that impact health—it could be whether or not you have employment, it could be access to green space, it could be access to services like healthcare or counseling. The Healthy Community Model is recognized by the World Health Organization and it’s been picked up by organizations around the globe. If we drill down into community design, picking up on the importance of feeling safe and comfortable, as Viive mentioned, but taking it outside of the institution and into the community, we then look at how people are interacting with their communities.

Public health research indicates that we’re designing our communities in a way that is having a negative impact on our health.

The other model I like to borrow from is the “healthy communities process,” which looks at the idea of collective action in which professionals and the community work together to find a solution to a problem, blending community development with what we call determinants of health. So whether you have a job, whether you have a certain level of education—these are determinants of health. The physical environment affects health, so, for example, we know that the health status of people in rural and suburban areas is much lower than in more urbanized, walkable communities.

NC: You’re addressing health more at the scale of planning and community design, such as walkability, pedestrianfriendly environments.

PY: Yes, most of the work I do is on active transportation, promoting walkability, cycling, blading—any kind of non-motorized activity—for health-related reasons. That is typically community planning, but then you get to the street-design scale. We can designate a street as a bikeway, but the details—how you make it comfortable for cyclists—that’s where I think landscape architects can contribute quite a bit.

NC: The need to get people outside and to encourage people to be active are a couple of the basic starting points for that relationship between landscape and health.

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PY: And recognizing the role of public policy.

Public health campaigns tell us that people need to eat their veggies, get their exercise, and quit smoking. But it’s been a discussion under the umbrella of “lifestyle choices”— almost like blaming the victim. There are reasons why people don’t bike— distance, safety... And this comes back to public policy.

NC: Jane, tell us about your Stratford hospital garden and your work in the health arena.

Jane Eligh-Feryn (JEF): You were talking earlier about making hospital gardens and special needs facilities very accessible and safe. I’ve done a lot of work on schoolyard design and workshops with students and communities, and then implementing schoolyard design. It seems to me that one of the problems is that we’ve made all these spaces too safe. When I work on hospital courtyard designs, I’ve often worked with physiotherapists and occupational therapists and nursing staff. What they’re asking for is levels of difficulty, levels of complexity. I think it’s the same in the schoolyards; there has to be visibility, there has to be a sense of safety and security in the schoolyard, but there has to be intrigue and access to

nature and complexity that makes it interesting enough that students are actually engaged with nature.

I was involved with a one-acre native plant park in Stratford called Meadow Rue Corner.

It became a series of paths with a number of different plant communities interlinked.

One day I met a woman who was schizophrenic. She and I started chatting and she said, “You know, whenever I feel a schizophrenic episode coming on, I come here, because I know that it’s one place in the city that I can come and ground myself.” That really said a lot to me about the fact that this very complex, very rich, very kind of chaotic space was also a very healing space. I would say that what informs me in design is allowing those layers and opportunities for safety and accessibility with increasing levels of complexity and making the accessibility more and more difficult so that people have to work a little harder to get there and enjoy it and use the space.

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Grand River Cancer Care Centre.

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Vertechs Design Inc.

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wasn’t a lot of empirical evidence that said, if you have access to a tree you’re going to be healthier. But now there is.

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There is an emphasis in urban design on creating spaces such as very safe streets where visibility is there, but my concern is when there’s nothing vital, nothing alive, nothing that’s challenging to young people as they make their journey to school, or play after school. Even parks and playgrounds tend to be very sparse. There’s clear visibility and there’s quick access if a bully’s chasing you—for sure, those things are very important—but in terms of actually engaging with nature, that doesn’t seem to be coming into the picture. I don’t think it’s designers’ fault; I think it’s policy—schoolyard policy, parks design policy...

VK: I think that school board budgets play a big role. Currently, we’re working on a school project where there’s the desire to create more interesting outdoor spaces for the students, but there are budget constraints and concerns about liability.

Introduction of natural features like boulders and logs for balance beams often gets deleted in favour of manufactured components because of the liability issue.

Sometimes where we want to add another level of challenge we’re asked not to, resulting in much less exciting and challenging landscapes for the kids.

JEF: I think that is changing to some extent.

When you put in one of those big, heavy manufactured climbers, you’re talking a hundred thousand dollars sometimes that schools are spending on those great big plastic and metal climbing structures. If there’s budget for that kind of thing, budget isn’t really a reason not to plant trees and shrubs and put in stone pathways and make it a little grittier, a little dirtier, so to speak.

PY: Picking up on your notion of safety, only 25 percent of kids now walk to school. It used to be much higher. Now, three quarters of the kids don’t experience weather, they don’t experience direction or wayfinding, or the physical activity of walking. There was a survey done of 6,000 kids in Ontario, which found that 85 percent of them would prefer to walk or bike to school. The desire is there, but we haven’t made it easy.

JEF: I did a series of workshops last year in Huron County schools. I was hired to go in and do environmental education workshops around creating habitat, using native plant material, and looking at connectivity within the landscape. Then I did a design charrette with these different schools and the kids did the design. They had to go out and do the inventory, they had to look at where the sun and shade were, where all the utilities on the site were, where the connections were with other natural areas. Then we did design. I took the designs and massaged them and turned them into something that the schools could work with. But the kids came up with wild and crazy and wonderful things. They want the stuff that I grew up with: playing in ravines and climbing trees…

I think there is truly a disconnect between society and nature. I think that’s a serious problem, a serious health concern. I find that’s one gift that landscape architects can bring to the table: that understanding, that appreciation, that sensitivity to our relationship with nature.

PY: There’s some great research coming out now that actually corroborates the link between nature and health. Richard Louv wrote a book called Last Child in the Woods, and I believe he coined the term “nature deficit disorder.” When I was in school, there

VK: We’re working on the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Queen Street Campus redevelopment in Toronto. It’s all about integrating the institution with the urban fabric and bringing the community into the CAMH campus.

The idea of de-stigmatizing mental healthcare and integrating clients at this facility with their neighbourhood is very important.

Removing physical barriers such as the walls that once enclosed the site and welcoming retail opportunities helps create a normalized environment. I think landscape plays a big part in that process.

NC: Is there anything that we would see in the CAMH development in the streetscape design or the landscape designs around the buildings that looks distinctly different from any other new development? I’m wondering if there’s anything particular to ideas about facilitating or fostering mental health, or if what we’re describing is “good design,” as in good, overall urban design that promotes health for everyone.

VK: I think it’s good urban design that promotes health for everyone in terms of the streetscape design. We also designed a courtyard for one of the campus buildings, which was designed for a geriatric mental health population, an adolescent group, and a daycare, all within the same courtyard. The daycare play area itself is enclosed with a fence to contain the children, but the geriatric and adolescent groups are meant to mix and mingle.

The space has been created so that both groups can use the space simultaneously.

Our design intent was to create a courtyard

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The gardens at the Grand River Cancer Care Centre are a part of the healing process.

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Vertechs Design Inc.

Round Table

with a residential, home-like feel so that it doesn’t feel institutional, though there were many safety factors that needed to be addressed. Ease of visual supervision throughout the courtyard was a key factor in the design. One of the biggest challenges that I hear about, from folks who are working in the mental health sector, is stigmatization. I think the role of the street in addressing that is really important. I think planners, urban designers, and landscape architects have an understanding, but the health sector can have a limited view: “Oh, public space... we could have a bench maybe.”

VK: We recently completed two rental townhouse projects in Regent Park [in Toronto]. The idea is that while the front yards of those townhouse units are relatively small in scale, each unit has its own private space which overlooks the public realm. These add to the element of safety when residents sit on their front stoops to watch the action on the streets and so interact with their community.

PY: I hear in public space workshops, can we have more benches? Can we have a public washroom? These are things that are important. We’re trying to get people out experiencing nature and physical activity, and they can’t find a washroom.

JEF: As [author] William Whyte identified, it takes very simple components—give people something to sit on, give people something to look at, give people something to eat, give people a washroom! If you can include these very simple design principles, you suddenly have places where people want to be.

NC: In much older, even medieval, hospital garden design, the cloister or enclosed garden was important. The separation for privacy and safety and a kind of segregation had positive aspects. A different approach is the CAMH one with an emphasis on integration, connectivity, and natural surveillance. Is the enclosed garden still being designed in healthcare settings?

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VK: It’s a matter of creating opportunities for both, to create public spaces that staff, visitors, patients, and the community can all use as well as private spaces for a distinct client group. I’m thinking of the New Oakville Hospital for which we prepared the illustrative landscape master plan. The old model, and we see this a lot at existing hospitals throughout Ontario, is the “hospital in the parking lot.” There’s very little thought given to the pedestrian realm, how cyclists are accessing the site and where they’re going to park their bikes. Moving forward, all of our hospital campus designs are very much geared toward the pedestrian, the cyclist, active transportation, while still accommodating vehicles, but looking at ways to integrate the landscape with the parking that is necessary.

JEF: In the past, psychiatric hospitals were almost always built with huge grounds. Look at Humber Psychiatric Hospital and the Homewood in Guelph; there were many psychiatric hospitals in Ontario that were built mainly around the turn of the century that were all built on big properties with big, park-like settings. There was a kind of understanding or belief at that time, that access to nature had a healing effect. Now, in these hospitals where we have to create smaller spaces because land is at a premium, it’s still important to provide that opportunity to get outside, whether it’s in a protected courtyard or whether you have the luxury of a little bit more space.

VK: St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton is being constructed on a significant site atop the Niagara Escarpment. A large component of the landscape consists of playing

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fields, baseball diamonds, and tennis courts for the community to use. The idea of de-stigmatizing the mental healthcare facility is key, of inviting the community in and creating a venue where local baseball teams can practise or neighbours can walk along the escarpment trail.

PY: I think that the concept of having a hospital out in nature was fueled by the idea that cities were inherently unhealthy.

Then we had this flight to the suburbs in the 40s, 50s. Now we’re coming around to the idea that cities can be quite livable. How can we make our cities more like the nature that we want to immerse ourselves in?

NC: Clare Cooper Marcus, one of the early landscape architect advocates and writers on health and landscapes, writes about a

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The gardens at Belmont House, a long-term care facility in Toronto, were designed to create a “homelike” atmosphere.

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Vertechs Design Inc.

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St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton.

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Vertechs Design Inc.

Round Table

turn back to connecting with nature in hospital landscape design in the 1990s.

She posits that patient-centred care began a rebirth of looking at outdoor spaces and making connections to health, citing research by Roger Ulrich and others. Would you agree with that analysis, or are there other factors in your experience that have led to a re-orientation to landscape design?

JEF: Even when we talk about making areas accessible for people with mobility issues, providing textural surfaces is still important.

It’s part of therapy to climb slight rises and slight declines and walk on surfaces that have different textures. Patients going through physical or occupational therapy have to learn to adapt to a range of conditions.

VK: I think all the work that we do is patient-focused, but it goes beyond the patient, to also addressing the needs of the staff, visitors, the community, and the administrators. Landscape maintenance is a huge factor, because if these healing landscapes in healthcare settings are not maintained, then they end up looking derelict and, in turn, nobody wants to use them. We design relatively low-maintenance landscapes. We’ve also worked on many projects that are right downtown, where space is at a premium and there’s very little, if any, landscaped streetscape at ground level. The solution in many cases is to design roof terraces and upper-level courtyards that can be easily accessed.

VK: Within the rehabilitation gardens we have designed, typically there is one flat, accessible route and then different paths with varying paving materials, such as lawn, limestone screenings, or pea gravel, combined with ramps and stairs, so that there are choices for patients and therapists to work on rehabilitation goals and learn how to negotiate surfaces and grade changes.

NC: Is there any difference between designing for wellness and designing for people who are ill?

JEF: The Alzheimer’s gardens have to be contained because Alzheimer’s patients tend to wander and they are inclined to eat things. So you have to make sure you don’t have toxic plants...even mulch can be a problem. I think it’s important to understand what population you’re designing for.

VK: It’s important to create sensory experiences that stimulate individuals and can be used as a rehabilitation tool for people in institutional settings. We create landscapes with seasonal interest to assist with orientation to time and season. Creating spaces that appeal to all of the senses is important, regardless of the client group.

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Neighbourhood Design and Health PY: Public health departments are publishing compelling research studies that provide a good foundation for landscape architects. ”Healthy Toronto by Design” just came out.

It talks about community design planning.

In the case of Toronto, they’ve estimated that by getting traffic down by 20 percent, you can save approximately 200 lives a year. In Los Angeles they reduced the traffic by about 25 percent during the Olympic Games—they boosted the transit, they provided extra buses, and they restricted cars going in—and they saw the hospital admission rates go down 40 percent for kids with asthma.

It goes back to what we were talking about regarding patient-centred care. In healthcare institutions, you need to ask people, what is your life like and how can we make it easier and better in this institution? The same approach goes for cities and park design; how can we make our cities more responsive to people’s needs? I think the key is to actually incorporate people into the design process.

JEF: Isn’t that true for everything? I’m thinking of the schoolyard situations as well—the kids and their parents have a chance to be involved in making decisions. You’ve got a product that you know they’ll use, but they’ll also take care of it, they’ll respect it, there will be less vandalism.

PY: Yes. However, good front-end consultation is often the piece that gets chopped.

And post-construction engagement is almost non-existent. Instead, let’s create a garden for people to then decide what they want planted, then have them plant and have a programming commitment to coordinate the gardening program. We could be providing opportunities for people to be engaged all along.

JEF: Some hospitals have horticultural therapy. If that can be incorporated in the design, I think it would go a long way to helping the patients.

VK: Raised beds for people who can’t bend or lower themselves to the ground are important to the healing garden. But again, it’s very group-specific and projectspecific because if there isn’t a program that uses the space, it will become an empty and unsightly raised bed.

Consultation with user groups is critical.

Getting support from the institution, finding out exactly what their programs are and how they intend to use the space, and designing specifically for those programs results in a successful healing garden.

PY: Healthy spaces, I think, do require some involvement beyond the design. The maintenance, programming, and partnering with other organizations are crucial aspects.

JEF: As designers, we have to understand that from the get-go. You know, who are we working with, who will be maintaining it, who will be facilitating it and making sure that there’s an ongoing budget?

VK: There’s no such thing as a no-maintenance landscape. [laughter] WITH THANKS TO ADRIENNE HALL FOR TRANSCRIBING THIS ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION.

Therapeutic Roots

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TEXT BY DENISE PINTO

An historic asylum in London, Ontario, that redefined patient care through landscape

The trees stand in a row, staggeringly tall, with glistening branches on a late spring day. In the distance a yellow brick building is framed at the centre, like a classically drawn perspective. Along with the spreading open lawn beyond, the allée seems strangely inconsistent with where I am standing: on the grounds of the former London Asylum for the Insane. With dappled light filtering through the canopy, I imagine that patients walked these rows of maple and ash gaining serenity, and that the comfort of this landscape made a place for those misfits, cast out for mental trauma, ineptitude, or in some cases divergent thinking.

I’m with local landscape architect Ron Koudys, OALA. He is a recently retired professor from Fanshawe College, which borders the London Psychiatric Hospital Lands, as this place is called today. I’ve asked Koudys to help me interpret the site, which is being redeveloped for use as an urban village. Equipped with a handful of historical references of London from Koudys’ personal collection, we begin our tour.

Where we are standing would have been a monumental main building surrounded by a plantation of elm, black walnut, and spruce. Now, the infirmary is the central brick structure, its windows and doors boarded-up with metal plates. When the institution opened in 1870, it would have been entirely fenced-in to keep outsiders from making the patients into curiosities, but today the sight lines have been opened, many trees removed, and the modern buildings of Regional Mental Health Care London fan out in a palmate pattern.

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At the London Asylum, however, the history is laid out a little differently. The superintendent who was most notable for the reform of the London Asylum, Dr. Richard Bucke, had grown up on an expansive farm right next to the eventual site of the asylum. His large family and surroundings had instilled in him the value of enduring landscape. Writing of his boyhood in his old age, and adopting a third-person voice, Bucke mused that his “pleasures were as simple as his labors.”

He’d tended cattle, worked the fields and, as he put it, “assisted in such labor as lay within his power.” When Bucke took over the reins of the institution in 1887, he set out to offer patients opportunities that were within their powers, too. Continuing the progressive approach developed by his predecessor, Dr. Henry Landor, Bucke saw the asylum as a place where troubled minds could be redirected to the pursuit of good work— much of which attended to the landscape.

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Around us, parking lots abound. The circulation for the current facility hugs the edge of Highbury Avenue to the west, instead of starting at the allée where we entered.

The route now is more direct, but lacks the grandeur of the original entrance—one of a handful of characteristic features that has garnered the attention of the province. As Infrastructure Ontario evaluates its heritage land holdings, hospital properties in Kingston, Brockville, Penetanguishene, and Gravenhurst (to name a few) have appeared on the radar as possible candidates for reinvestment. What’s said of the difference here, in London, and what pushes my interest in the London Psychiatric Lands, is this: the landscape is symbolic of a remarkably different approach to care than was typical for its time.

At the time, Bucke was thought to be an outright radical, with an unusual approach to care. Patients were encouraged to tend to the land (approximately eighty cultivated hectares) and the food they ate was produced by their own hands. Crops such as cabbage, tomatoes, onions, and radishes were all plentiful. There was even a patientrun cannery to preserve food for winter meals and for sale at the London market.

Bucke’s time was prior to prescription medication, and although alcohol was used widely in other institutions as a sedative, and control measures such as cold baths, restraint chairs, and spinning chambers were commonplace, Bucke famously renounced the use of alcohol and ordered all the canvas straight jackets to be made into slippers. He spurned reliance on restraints and seclusion, instead offering an open-door policy with all but the clinically dangerous. Nearly two hundred patients were not only allowed, but encouraged to freely use the grounds.

In the late nineteenth century, the establishment of asylums like this one was part of a widespread movement to detain and segregate the “ill of mind and character.”

The approach to asylum design in Ontario, borrowed from English and American precedents, was an off-shoot of jail architecture, making heavy use of barred windows and seclusion chambers. This followed the eugenics movement, which endorsed corralling the “mentally deficient” in order to purify the gene pool, forcing incarcerated patients to live out their days in abysmal holding facilities.

Koudys and I make a ring around the property, the purposeful views along the central north-south axis becoming more apparent.

Around us, old orchards have been turned into soccer fields but their history flickers behind closed eyelids: 73 hectares of groves and pleasure grounds once filled with patients playing cricket in summers, ice skating and collecting maple sap when the snow fell. Records of the patients made available to the public show astonishing 02

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self-selection. In a society where they were denied the opportunity to participate in normal routines, patients happily elected to join the work effort.

At the end of the 19th century, patients were said to have tended cows and pigs, benefiting from fresh milk and meat, and the companionship of animals. Even as reliance on farming dwindled into the 20th century, and the city of London proper began to envelope the remote site, gardening remained a fast-held therapeutic engagement. The patients worked with gardeners to cover the grounds with perennial geraniums and maintain rows of willow hedges, most of which have been removed to accommodate vehicular routes and parking today. Though there aren’t any people around during our visit, Koudys and I consider how wonderful it would be if the idea were to have a resurgence.

From asylum to urban village Today, the London Psychiatric Hospital Lands are being revisioned. The Ontario government, in partnership with the City of London, is actively re-working the land-use plans in order to preserve the history of the site. Currently in a secondary review stage, the proposal on the table is for an urban village with circulation routes that mimic the historic ones, and a new mixed-use core that will continue to intensify the street edge along Highbury Avenue.

Wendy Shearer, OALA, was the landscape architect overseeing the conservation plan, and under the umbrella of MHBC Planning Ltd., she continues to consult on the redevelopment. She explains that the conservation

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plan was part of a government mandate to recognize and invest in the restoration of significant cultural spaces, and mentions that the London Psychiatric Hospital Lands have made the cut just as much for the legacy of humane care as for the historical architecture.

Shearer’s specialty is in preserving historic traces, and she does this by translating the therapeutic uses of the grounds into a direction for future uses and aesthetics. She has recommended, for example, filling out the tree cover—adding maples, oaks, walnuts, basswood, and tulip trees, which, when mature, will approximate the scale of the elms that were obliterated by disease in the mid-20th century.

She’s also recommended preserving a handful of remaining buildings such as the infirmary, horse stable, recreation hall, and a small interfaith Gothic church that may connect one day to a central gathering place in the community.

“You can’t look at these sites as clean slates,” Shearer notes. “There are significant clues.” The original design of the allée, for instance, will become the backbone of a new circulation plan that emphasizes cycling and pedestrian connections to transit nodes at the north and south end of the site. In the Secondary Plan put together by MHBC, appropriate settings and views of the historic architecture are maintained by linear and curvilinear open space with intensive development focused at the site edges where there are major arterial roads.

And as for urban farms? The specifics are still up in the air, but at least one of the concepts has a place for community gardens on the eastern boundary of the property.

Though I’m heartened by this legacy of productive land, I’m curious as to whether its use in patient therapy is still alive in medical practice. Across town, I make a quick stop at Mount Hope Centre for Long Term Care, where patients and their families grow tomatoes and wildflowers on the institution’s grounds, one of Ron Koudys’ projects from years ago. Here, butterflies are plentiful.

Photos on the wall show delighted residents with monarchs perched on their fingers. Patients who are well enough have, with the help of family and staff, planted vegetables, which they tend to under a broad, curving trellis. Brightly painted signs adorn plots of garden; a former garbage bin is now a planter. It’s a snapshot of how contemporary care is re-embracing gardening, family, and food at the centre of treatment. Just as Bucke encouraged the patients in his care to do more than a century ago, those who can contribute do as much as lies within their power.

I would like to thank Ron Koudys, OALA, and Wendy Shearer, OALA, for their time and insight, and Dale Jardine at the Regional Mental Health Centre for providing historical resources. More information on the history of the London Asylum is available, via the 2008-2009 Public History students from the University of Western Ontario, at http://www.lib.uwo.ca/archives/virtualexhibits/londonasylum.

BIO/ DENISE PINTO, A GRADUATE OF THE MASTER OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, CURRENTLY WORKS AT HOK.

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Patients working in cabbage fields, 1880.

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Archives of Ontario; Regional Mental Health Care London

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London Psychiatric Hospital Lands.

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Archives of Ontario; Regional Mental Health Care London

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Greenhouse near farm manager’s residence.

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Archives of Ontario; Regional Mental Health Care London

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Patients canning fruits and berries.

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Archives of Ontario; Regional Mental Health Care London

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Early 1920s team of horses and men working the fields.

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Archives of Ontario; Regional Mental Health Care London

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Patients’ garden project.

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Archives of Ontario; Regional Mental Health Care London

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Grand allée on the London Psychiatric Hospital grounds.

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Denise Pinto

Landscapes that Heal

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ALEX’S BUTTERFLY GARDEN London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) Victoria Hospital Campus Commissioners Rd. E., London

A selection of public and/or institutional healing landscapes in Ontario TEXT BY ADRIENNE HALL AND ROB WALKOWIAK

For more information on these and other projects, visit the Ground section of the OALA website (www.oala.ca) and click on Ground 18, “Landscapes that Heal.”

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Alex’s Butterfly Garden, London Health Sciences Centre, London.

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Vafiades Landscape Architect Inc.

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Centre for Addiction and Mental Health landscape, Toronto.

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Vertechs Design Inc.

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Designer Vafiades Landscape Architect Inc. Jim Vafiades, OALA, Senior Landscape Architect Kernow Garden Inc. Michael Pascoe, NPD, ODH, CHT, MSc, Designer/ Horticulturist Lead Contractor: Clintar Groundskeeping

CENTRE FOR ADDICTION AND MENTAL HEALTH LANDSCAPE Centre for Addiction and Mental Health – Queen Street Redevelopment 1001 Queen St. West and 60 White Squirrel Way, Toronto Designer Vertechs Design Inc.

Alex’s Butterfly Garden, located adjacent to the Adult Intensive Care Unit and near the Children’s Intensive Care Unit at the Victoria Hospital Campus, opened in the summer of 2008.

The CAMH Redevelopment Project, to be completed in the summer of 2012, has converted a 27-acre site on Queen Street West in Toronto into a welcoming “urban village.”

It weaves together new cutting-edge CAMH facilities with shops, residences, businesses, parks, and through streets to create an inclusive, healing community.

Inspired by Alex Lesley Hart, the design of the garden is based on an initial concept idea prepared by Michael Pascoe that was further developed and refined by Jim Vafiades of Vafiades Landscape Architect (currently with Stantec Consulting Ltd.).

Incorporating a series of intertwined arcs that are reflective of DNA strands, the garden incorporates a number of passive seating areas for quiet meditation in a setting that includes more than 32 species of shrubs and perennials for an all-season display. One of the more challenging aspects of the garden was its location adjacent to the main entry road to several clinics; a decorative masonry wall incorporates custom-designed fence panels that effectively block out the vehicular noise.

The garden is directly adjacent to the windows of the Intensive Care Unit, affording patients a view of the garden.

The goal is to create a normalized environment, integrated with the surrounding community, that responds to the needs of the clients, staff, and visitors to CAMH. Existing green spaces and significant mature trees have been preserved and protected during construction.

The ground-floor courtyard in the B2 building is a healing environment associated with the three program areas of Geriatric Mental Health, Child Ambulatory Services, and the Adolescent Program. The objective was to create a safe, secure, calm, and comfortable place for all users, promoting a balance between safety and a humanistic approach.

There is a strong integration between the interior and exterior. The layout of the B2 courtyard provides unobstructed site lines for natural visual surveillance of all three program areas, whether outdoors or viewed through windows at ground floor or upper floors of the building. The courtyard layout also provides opportunities for the Geriatric Mental Health and Adolescent program clients to share a flexible seating space, contemplative garden, bbq area, and formal planting area. Materials for hard and soft landscaping were selected for low maintenance and durability.

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Landscapes that Heal

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CANCER SURVIVORS PARK Near the Ottawa Hospital and Regional Cancer Clinic, junction of Alta Vista Dr., Riverside Dr., and Industrial Ave., Ottawa Designer Corush Sunderland Wright This Cancer Survivors Parks centres around two messages, one being a “Positive Mental Attitude Walk” and the other a “Road to Recovery.” These messages, which are mandatory for all Cancer Survivors Parks, are conveyed through stationary plaques mounted on stone cairns that frame a large circular walkway.

The circle represents the communities and the people who live here, and illustrates how within the community we all rely on each other to live fulfilling lives. Trees are planted at the edges of the space, tempering the climate by buffering winds and providing shade. A bouquet of seven flowers, six-metres high, rise out from behind the entry wall to welcome motorists as they approach from the east. The sculpture “Cancer, there is Hope” animates the park’s Riverside Dr. entrance. The gentle grades quiet the roadways and provide a sense of privacy.

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CNIB HEADQUARTERS FRAGRANT GARDEN Canadian National Institute for the Blind, 1929 Bayview Ave., Toronto Designer Vertechs Design Inc.

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COMPLEX CONTINUING CARE TERRACE GARDEN Toronto East General Hospital, 825 Coxwell Ave.,Toronto Designer Dennis A. Winters / TALES of the EARTH TALES of the EARTH transformed a neglected, narrow fifth-floor hospital rooftop into a restorative garden for 75 residents of the Complex Continuing Care Unit (CCCU).

Drawing on qualities and characteristics of Sacred Landscape, the garden helps residents draw on inner strength and spiritual connections for a sense of well being.

Within a challenging space 140 feet long and 9 to 23 feet wide, the garden was designed as sculpture, stimulating all senses. The design vocabulary speaks to the richness and depth of historical and cultural traditions brought to the CCCU by residents from their varied birthplaces and homelands. Vibrantly coloured steel pavilions frame the garden at either end: the yellow-ochre tent for active social gatherings, the light-blue temple for private refuge. Warm Kingston dry-laid sandstone planting walls contain a path wide enough for two wheelchairs. Using a “seen and hidden” Japanese stroll garden technique, the path changes orientation, weaving from one pavilion to the other. Fragrant climbing vines, shrubs, roses and grapes, aromatic and flowering herbs and perennials trigger memories of meaningful places in the home-like setting.

The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) headquarters is a complex facility designed to set new standards of accessibility for people who are blind, visually impaired, and deafblind. The design goal was to create an enticing series of landscape spaces for people of all levels of ability. Completed in the summer of 2006, the resultant solution was based on the same groundbreaking principles that were the basis for the building’s design, including universal accessibility, sustainability, and longevity.

Knowledge of way-finding and cueing techniques were important tools in the formation of the landscape. The Fragrant Garden is the highlight of the facility. It combines walkways, planters, and shaded sitting areas.

The emphasis was on the provision of a tactile and fragrant garden that maximizes sensory stimulation in a comfortable setting for those with vision loss.

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Cancer Survivors Park, Ottawa.

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Corush Sunderland Wright

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CNIB Headquarters Fragrant Garden, Toronto.

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Vertechs Design Inc.

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Complex Continuing Care Garden, Toronto East General Hospital, Toronto.

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Dennis A. Winters/TALES of the EARTH

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GITIGAAN MASHKIKI - HEART LAKE ABORIGINAL MEDICINE WHEEL GARDEN Heart Lake Conservation Area, 10818 Heart Lake Rd., Brampton

GUELPH ENABLING GARDEN Riverside Park, Woolwich St. north of Speedvale Ave., Guelph

Designer The design was envisioned by Anthony Templar, an Elder with the Anishnabe Nation, and members of the Peel Aboriginal Network. The project was made possible through the combined efforts of the Peel Aboriginal Network, the Heart Lake Community Action Area Group, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, City of Brampton, and Region of Peel.

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Designer Glynis Logue In 2000, a group of Guelph citizens created a plan to fill idle land along the Speed River with a fully accessible therapeutic garden.

Designed by Glynis Logue, the garden thoughtfully blends form and function with curving concrete pathways, raised cedar beds at varying heights, community garden plots, wayfinding markers, sensory and nontoxic plantings, and a shed for housing ergonomic tools.

The garden is designed in the shape of a medicine wheel, a circle divided into four sections. With guidance from the local aboriginal community, staff and volunteers worked together to build the garden by hand, creating a space for healing, celebration, and peace for all. This garden, which opened in May, 2010, is recognized as an Aboriginal Medicine Wheel Garden and honours aboriginal people, their culture, and teachings of the four cardinal directions and their seven grandfather teachings of honesty, respect, humility, love, wisdom, truth, and courage. Features of the garden include four mulched pathways, which separate garden beds, representing the four cardinal directions. At the end of each garden there are four hand-crafted wooden benches, each carved with an animal archetype: Eagle, Turtle, Buffalo, and Bear.

The centre of the garden has been planted with a beautiful Eastern White Cedar and the garden beds have been planted through community efforts with various native medicinal plants.

As one enters the garden it is evident that spiritual refuge and horticultural therapy abound. The quiet woodland embraces all that is ephemeral and native. Pull-off zones offer seating with custom armrests to sit and rise easily. A main path highlights barrierfree design principles such as smooth surfaces and gentle slopes to accommodate wheelchairs, walkers, and clients with low vision. In the spiral garden, movement and balance harmonize through an archway that overlooks the river’s beauty.

The community garden area is a mainstay for teaching, working, and growing. A wooden arbour, roll-under work station, and climbing vines produce an enclosure for workshops. A line of meandering trees lead to ground beds for agile individuals to tend and an educational walk focused on fragrance, texture, colour, sound, and taste.

Logue coordinated construction in 2004.

Today, the garden is vibrant year-round with a dedicated volunteer maintenance team and horticultural therapist who structures programming, which includes workshops.

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Guelph Enabling Garden rendering.

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Glynis Logue

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HOLLAND BLOORVIEW KIDS REHABILITATION HOSPITAL LANDSCAPE Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, 150 Kilgour Rd., Toronto Designer Vertechs Design Inc. This facility, the largest children’s rehabilitation centre in Ontario, serves children and youths with disabilities and special needs. It is a hospital, a school, a community resource, as well as a research facility.

Completed in 2007, the landscape goals were to create a child-friendly atmosphere together with a welcoming community centre within an established residential neighbourhood. The grounds accommodate a play space for the school and for the licensed daycare, and a variety of open spaces throughout the grounds for therapy program and summer day-camp use. The outdoor space has the potential to provide therapists with additional opportunities for encouraging gross motor activities, mobility training, skills development, various sensory experiences, and use as a testing ground.

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Gitigaan Mashkiki—Heart Lake Aboriginal Medicine Wheel Garden, Brampton.

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TRCA

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Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation landscape, Toronto.

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Vertechs Design Inc.

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SHEENA’S PLACE HEALING GARDEN Sheena’s Place, 87 Spadina Rd., Toronto Designer Vertechs Design Inc.

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PEARSON MOTION GARDEN St. Joseph Health Centre, 100 Westmount Rd., Guelph Designer Glynis Logue The Pearson Motion Garden, an innovative outdoor rehabilitation garden under construction in 2012, is a unique therapeutic environment with the goal of reshaping the future of rehabilitation as it reduces stress, elevates motivation, and speeds healing beyond the current expectations of an indoor rehabilitation facility.

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Pearson Motion Garden, St. Joseph Health Centre, Guelph.

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Glynis Logue

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Sheena’s Place Healing Garden, Toronto.

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Vertechs Design Inc.

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The garden design unifies five centres of recovery (strength, balance, agility, stability, and resilience). The main path follows a figure-eight loop to connect spaces in a comprehensive system. Sequentially over a typical six-week program, clients will proceed from simple to complex and assisted to independent activities that address traumas such as hip replacement, stroke, surgery, amputation, brain or spinal cord injuries. Not only does the garden shift rehabilitation therapy away from the indoor gym, it helps each patient maneuver real-world obstacles such as climbing stairs, shoveling a driveway, or hanging laundry. Salient features of the design include strength and agility apparatuses, stairs with and without railings, ramps, flagstone and cobble surfaces, raised planters, multi-height seating, levered hanging baskets and bird feeder, car transfer simulation, Zen garden, and putting green.

Sheena’s Place, a registered charity whose mission is to offer hope and support to people affected by eating disorders, is located in an old house in downtown Toronto. For the healing garden, Feng Shui Ontario provided guidelines for the application of a feng shui symbolic systems approach. The Healing Garden faces east, and so the resultant dominant element is wood, an element found in wooden furniture and accessories, outdoor plants, obelisks, trellis, pergola, and tree trunks. A turtle placed on the north side represents abundance, prosperity, and happiness. An angel statue at the entrance is positive chi swell.

Pathways meander in gentle inviting curves like a river. Midway through the garden a nook along the path provides space for a small garden bench. The more area of shelter created within the garden the better the feng shui. The meandering path wends its way through the garden to a larger gathering space.

Moving water is symbolic of bringing luck with it, and so the water falls towards the house, in full view. A sculptural wallmounted fountain creates flow and soothing stimulation with the sound of quiet water movement. Plant selection, together with a bird bath, make it a good place for birds, which are good movers of chi.

Landscapes that Heal

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SUNNYSIDE SUPPORTIVE HOUSING GARDEN Sunnyside Supportive Housing, 245 Franklin St. N, Kitchener Designer Scott Torrance Landscape Architect Inc. A “wander garden” is a garden with a meandering and circuitous path system that provides varied walking experiences, which can be very therapeutic. Retirement and palliative care facilities are particularly well suited to wander gardens and the benefits they provide. At Sunnyside, the two-year-old wander garden maximizes the use of the available green space and wraps around the building on three sides.

Two meandering paths crisscross in several locations, providing the residents with multiple routes through the garden. The paths, which provide access to the key entry points of the building, are designed as closed loops allowing for continuous walking in circuits, which is particularly beneficial for people suffering from dementia, allowing them to walk continuously without having to orient themselves. Benches are provided for resting spots along the pathways and also act as site markers.

The simple planting scheme for the garden provides early spring colour with spring bulbs, and fall interest using a variety of native grasses in the understory. Above the grasses and bulbs, the canopy of fluttering leaves, provided by the native trembling aspens, add both sound and visual interest.

These trees will eventually be replaced by the sugar maples growing among them.

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THE MAX TANENBAUM GARDEN AND SCULPTURE COURT Princess Margaret Hospital, 610 University Ave., Toronto Designer Neil Turnbull (Principal Designer); Ron Baird (sculptor) and William Lishman (sculptor)

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THE SPIRO FAMILY GARDEN The Baycrest Centre, 3560 Bathurst St., Toronto Designer Neil Turnbull (Principal Designer); Ron Baird (sculptor) Located on the second-floor rooftop connecting the Brain Health Centre and Baycrest Hospital, the garden, which opened in 2007, is designed to be ergonomically safe for clients with wheelchairs and medical equipment. The focal point of the garden is 12,000 square feet of decking and planters. Laid out in a dramatic pattern, the decking creates the backdrop for the custom-made furniture and thousands of plants. The 3,000-square-foot clerestory is covered in a green roof, bringing both beauty and significant environmental benefits. The green walls and dense plantings help to protect the garden from the wind. To provide shade, sculptor Ron Baird built a sculptural pavilion.

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Sunnyside Supportive Housing Garden, Kitchener.

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Scott Torrance Landscape Architect Inc.

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The Max Tanenbaum Garden and Sculpture Court, Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto.

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Neil Turnbull

The garden, which opened in 1999 and is on the 16th floor, with the sculpture court on the 14th floor, was designed for the benefit of patients, staff, families, visitors, and volunteers as a place of relaxation and contemplation, incorporating organic shapes as well as contemporary design elements.

The 8,000-square-foot garden consists of diamond-shaped panels of Ipé, a dense Brazilian hardwood that is particularly resistant to insects, fungi, moisture, and fire. The planters, clusters of hexagonal pillars of various heights, resemble a honeycomb.

The plant beds are overflowing with flowers, herbs, foliage, evergreens, and vegetables that are rotated to echo the changing seasons.

The sculptural chapel design by Ron Baird provides a focal point for the garden.

Hexagonal benches and tables provide generous seating and are designed to accommodate wheelchairs as well as hospital beds. There is ample shelter from the sun and rain under the sculpted steel canopy of the pavilion. For patients unable to venture outside, the roof garden’s 16thfloor location is visible from several of the hospital’s treatment floors. The roof garden also offers an excellent view of the Max Tanenbaum Sculpture Garden, situated in an enclosed courtyard on the 14th floor.

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The Spiro Family Garden, Baycrest Centre, Toronto.

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Neil Turnbull

Landscapes that Heal

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TRINITY PARK LABYRINTH Trinity Anglican Church, Grand Ave. and Blair Rd., Cambridge 18

Designer Hoyle & Associates 17

THE GARDEN OF FOND MEMORIES Hanover and District Hospital, 90—7th Ave., Hanover

Trinity Park was deeded to Trinity Anglican Church in 1844 by Absalom Shade, one of the founders of Galt, Ontario. The park has been continuously open to the public since then. Parish nurse Barbara Lemm envisioned a new community use in the park in 1998—a labyrinth. In the fall of 2011 the Trinity Labyrinth Group retained Hoyle & Associates to advise on the design of the labyrinth. Presented with several options, the “Heart of the Chartres” labyrinth was selected because of its beauty and similar design to the church windows. The design is based on the 12-circuit pathway of the 16thcentury labyrinth at the Cathedral of our Lady Chartres in France. The “Heart” has only six pathways to accommodate the space available in Trinity Park.

Designer Paul Brydges Landscape Architecture This garden, which opened in 2010, was created to honour the memory of a local resident who was a registered nurse with the hospital for 38 years. It was also built to thank and honour the staff, who dedicate their skills and passion to make the hospital a place of healing.

The River of Life within the garden is a dry stream bed where the name of a loved one can be etched in stone and placed in the stream as a remembrance. All elements within the garden are available for purchase as dedication pieces, from individual pieces of interlocking stone to the wooden bridge, benches, and specimen trees. With the sale of elements within the garden, there is the potential to raise funds for hospital needs such as equipment, etc.

Labyrinths are often confused with mazes.

Labyrinths have one continuous path to the centre. Mazes have dead ends and multiple path options. Although more recently constructed in churches, labyrinths are often used as healing gardens in hospitals and community parks. They are also used to celebrate, grieve, slow down, to seek insight, and to enjoy and appreciate the beauty of their intricate patterns.

Working within a confined space in front of a hospital provided its own unique challenges, from noise abatement strategies to dust prevention so as not to interfere with the hospital air filtration system almost directly above the work area. Construction costs for the garden were donated by a private resident within the community, as well as the landscape contractor. The design, project, and construction administration were also donated by the design firm.

Opened on World Labyrinth Day (the first Saturday in May) in 2012, the Trinity Park Labyrinth is constructed of a limestone path stabilized with Organic-Lock binder by Envirobond. The planting between the paths is Japanese bloodgood grass (Imperata cylindrica ‘Red Baron’) and the shrub chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa).

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Trinity Park Labyrinth, Cambridge.

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Hoyle & Associates

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The Garden of Fond Memories, Hanover and District Hospital, Hanover.

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Paul Brydges Landscape Architecture

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Gardens at the Rehabilitation and Acquired Brain Injury Building and The David Braley Cardiovascular Research Building, Hamilton Health Sciences.

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Greg Johnstone, MHBC

GARDENS AT THE REHABILITATION AND ACQUIRED BRAIN INJURY BUILDING AND THE DAVID BRALEY CARDIOVASCULAR RESEARCH BUILDING Hamilton Health Sciences, Copeland Ave. and Wellington St. N., Hamilton Designer MHBC Planning Urban Design and Landscape Architecture In 2004 the firm of Wendy Shearer Landscape Architect Limited (now MHBC) began the design of a unique landscape for Hamilton Health Sciences: an outdoor space for the rehabilitation of patients suffering from brain injuries. The site was to incorporate areas where patients could exercise, rest, and reflect. The site was also to include two additional roof gardens for patients requiring additional monitoring.

The project was completed in 2009.

The initial design was for the ABI Rehabilitation Centre and the outdoor amenities; later in the design stage, the David Braley Research Institute was added.

The ABI Rehabilitation Centre project consists of two roof garden areas and an outdoor physical rehabilitation/exercise area consisting of different textured walkways with varying elevations within an oval walkway that connect this feature to the Rehabilitation building. The oval walkway contains distance markers for monitoring patient progress. Plantings for the site were designed to provide full-season interest. A dry stream bed and native plant palette was created for plant diversity and to aid in stormwater management.

The design for the David Braley Research Institute complements the ABI Rehabilitation Centre design while giving the area its own identity. The raised entrance allows users of the building to view the site without interfering with the designated users of the rehabilitation garden.

Landscapes that Heal

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WAYPOINT CENTRE FOR MENTAL HEALTH GROUNDS Waypoint Centre for Mental Health, 500 Church St., Penetanguishene Designer G. O’Connor Consultants As part of a large multi-disciplinary proponent team, G. O’Connor Consultants is preparing the site redevelopment plan for a 44.5-ha. (110-acre) forensic mental health facility. The various private courtyards and multiple recreation zones throughout the site support patient recovery and healing, and are designed to assist patients to transition back into the community where possible. GOCI’s role was to create a campus layout for all outdoor walks, roads, parking, soft grading, patient courtyards, terraces, cycling, and roof gardens.

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BRIDGEPOINT HEALTH CENTRE HEALING GARDENS Bridgepoint Health Centre, 14 St. Matthews Rd., Toronto

Staff safety required a rethinking of conventional design solutions to ensure that concealment points were minimized, ligature-free shade structures were provided, and secure, durable materials were used.

Given the significant security issues, sight lines and visibility were important. Lowmaintenance, no-mow species will be utilized on many site areas to reduce recurring annual maintenance costs. The stormwater management pond is planted with a mixture of low-maintenance, regenerating species. Native plants were selected based on regional appropriateness. The project is targeting LEED® Silver.

Designer Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg (masterplan and design to 50% construction) MBTW (50% onward, final construction documents) 22

Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg (PFS) were the design Landscape Architects with KPMB /Stantec Joint Venture for ambulatory gardens, labyrinth, roof terraces, therapeutic spaces, and social and contemplative spaces. PFS was also responsible for preparation of the campus masterplan and the design of the public park in front of the historic Don Jail. PFS took the project to 50% construction documents as the project exemplar—the project was tendered by IO to three consortiums for completion and 30-year management and operations of the new hospital. Plenary Health, the team with Diamond and Schmidt Architects and MBTW Landscape Architects, was the successful proponent.

Flower gardens, an ornamental fountain, a labyrinth and public footpaths are some of the special features of the outdoor landscape, expected to be completed in 2013.

The gardens will integrate Bridgepoint with Riverdale Park and the surrounding neighbourhood. While there are several Toronto hospitals surrounded by lawns or parkland, Bridgepoint will be the only one with landscaped public gardens that have

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been specifically designed to promote health and well being. New pedestrian and bike paths will connect Gerrard Street to Riverdale Park. The grounds will include special gardens near the historic Don Jail.

An outdoor labyrinth will offer patients and the public a calm, meditative space. The hospital landscaping will also reintroduce native plants, increase the number of trees, and reduce hard surfaces.

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Waypoint Centre for Mental Health grounds, Penetanguishene.

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G. O’Connor Consultants

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Bridgepoint Health Centre Healing Gardens renderings, Toronto.

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Stantec Architecture/KPMB Architects, Planning, Design and Compliance Architects, HDR Architecture, Diamond Schmitt Architects, Design, Build, Finance and Maintain Architects

Landscapes that Heal

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JURAVINSKI CANCER CENTRE GARDENS AND INTERIOR PATIENT GARDEN Juravinski Cancer Centre, 699 Concession St., Hamilton Designer Visionscapes (Virginia Burt)

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HEALING GARDENS AT PETERBOROUGH REGIONAL HEALTH CENTRE Peterborough Regional Health Centre, 1 Hospital Dr., Peterborough Designer Basterfield & Associates Landscape Architects The Peterborough Regional Health Centre Building opened in 2010 and was designed with the basic premise of creating opportunities for holistic healing. All patient rooms have windows and there are a number of internal and exterior gardens built and planned as an extension of clinical care. The general site landscape design (constructed in 2011) supports this approach with a variety of plants, seating, boulders, and other amenities to enhance entrance areas, provide screening and attractive views from inside the building.

Completed, so far, are the Community Courtyards, Spiritual Care/Contemplative Courtyards, the Palliative Care Rooftop Garden, the Café Rooftop Patio, and a Rehabilitation Therapy Courtyard. Future plans include trails that link facilities and green space to the surrounding community, a community garden, exterior Mental Health courtyards, and a Rehabilitation Inpatient Courtyard. Construction of The Mental Health Courtyard is scheduled to begin in spring 2012. Also to be constructed this spring will be a cancer treatment facility with a garden approach to the main entrance.

Specific features of the courtyards include bubbling water features; seating areas, some with arbours; a varied selection of trees, shrubs, perennials, and groundcovers for year-round colour and privacy screening; rehabilitation features such as practice ramps, putting green, and accessible planters. As courtyards are completed, the associated departments are integrating them into their programs of treatment and care.

The expansion of the former Hamilton Regional Cancer Centre (renamed the Juravinski Cancer Centre) included redevelopment of exterior spaces on both roof deck and ground levels, completed in 2004. Using green roof technology, the intensive and extensive plantings are situated in various levels over radiation bunkers and corridors. Each of the gardens is overlooked by common hallways, waiting rooms, and offices, and is experienced by people walking to/from the entrances. A variety of seating walls and benches and a stepping stone path invite people to enjoy this ribbon of green space.

A carved stone reflecting basin and stone composition provide a focal point.

A renovation and expansion of the secondfloor systemic oncology suite was also done.

Expanding over an existing outdoor terrace, the client team wanted to include an indoor garden as part of the oncology suite. In collaboration with Vermeulen/ Hind Architects, Visionscapes created an interior garden room. Layout of all chemotherapy chairs have views towards the garden room.

Visionscapes designed the garden to be dominated by “Le Giant Silencieux” (The Silent Giant), a 5’6”-high granite water sculpture, commissioned by HRCC and created by stone sculptor Walt Rickli. Plantings occur in ground planters adjacent to Le Giant, in moveable pots and in upper planters above the doors. Wherever people receiving chemotherapy sit in this room, they will have views of “hanging” plants, plantings, and the sparkle of moving water over the “skin” of the massive boulder.

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NATIVE CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES OF TORONTO ROOF GARDEN Native Child and Family Services of Toronto, 30 College St., Toronto Designer Scott Torrance Landscape Architect Inc. Located atop the Native Child and Family Services building, this landscape aims to provide a space for all age groups. Integrating traditional elements adds cultural significance to the garden while its physical location offers an opportunity for refuge within the city. The roof garden integrates traditional healing and spiritual spaces (a community fire pit and a sweat lodge) with traditional gardens (a Sacred Medicine Garden and a Three Sister Garden), while also providing opportunities for play and education. The roof garden provides an opportunity for visitors to celebrate First Nations traditions and practices; not only healing the body, but also nurturing the spirit.

BIOS/ ADRIENNE HALL AND ROB WALKOWIAK ARE MEMBERS OF THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD.

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Peterborough Regional Health Centre gardens.

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Basterfield & Associates

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Juravinski Cancer Centre Gardens and Interior Patient Garden, Hamilton.

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Virginia Burt/Perkins Will Architects

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Native Child and Family Services of Toronto roof garden.

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A-Frame Studios

CSLA Awards

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CSLA REGIONAL HONOUR AWARD

CSLA Awards Canadian Society of Landscape Architects Awards of Excellence— Ontario Region

The Canadian Society of Landscape Architects Awards of Excellence are given for outstanding accomplishment in landscape architecture.

Congratulations to the following Regional Award winners.

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Project Name: Canadian Firefighters Memorial Consultant: PLANT Architect Inc. Client: CFF Foundation Location: Ottawa Category: New Directions

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Project Summary: The Canadian Firefighters Memorial is part of an urban planning memorial ensemble, commemorating fallen firefighters and creating a national place for their annual Ceremony Service on Ottawa’s Lebreton Flats. The design features a two-and-a-half times life-size bronze firefighter, 20m firepole, white pine, stone memorial wall shaped like Canada, stone-scape, and extensive planting to orchestrate personal reflection and a rhythm of remembrance.

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Canadian Firefighters Memorial.

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Courtesy of PLANT Architect Inc.

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CSLA REGIONAL CITATION AWARD Project Name: Rideau Canal Esplanade-Ottawa Convention Centre Forecourt Consultant: Corush Sunderland Wright Limited & Lashley + Associates Landscape Architecture Client: NCC/OCC Location: Ottawa Category: Design Project Summary: The Rideau Canal esplanade and OCC forecourt are the bond between the Rideau Canal, a world heritage site, and the Ottawa Convention Centre, the nation’s newest meeting place. The esplanade helps reveal the canal as the central unifying greenspace in the capital. The esplanade is the urban place to celebrate Ottawa, the nation’s capital.

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CSLA Awards

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Rideau Canal Esplanade-Ottawa Convention Centre Forecourt.

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Courtesy of Corush Sunderland Wright Limited and Lashley + Associates Landscape Architecture

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CSLA REGIONAL CITATION AWARD Project Name: Colonel Samuel Smith Park— Artificial Ice Trail Consultant: PMA Landscape Architects Client: City of Toronto Location: Toronto Category: Design 03

Project Summary: Colonel Samuel Smith skate trail is the first artificial outdoor ice-skating trail in the City of Toronto. The project is regionally significant as it brings a high-demand recreational use to a previously under-utilized historic site— a former psychiatric hospital. The repurposing of the hospital’s Power House into a community centre that provides a warm place to lace up adds to the trail’s charm and success.

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Colonel Samuel Smith Park-Artifical Ice Trail.

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Courtesy of PMA Landscape Architects

CSLA Awards

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CSLA REGIONAL CITATION AWARD Project Name: Oak Ridges Community Centre and Park Master Plan Consultant: Dillon Consulting Client: Town of Richmond Hill Location: Richmond Hill Category: Planning and Analysis 02

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Oak Ridges Community Centre and Park Master Plan.

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Courtesy of Dillon Consulting

Project Summary: The Oak Ridges Community Centre and Park Master Plan is an analysis, planning, and design project based on “environment first” principles. It demonstrates initiative in protecting, preserving, and enhancing the inherent natural resources of the complex Oak Ridges Moraine site, while balancing the recreational needs of the community on the waterfront parkland setting. The project demonstrates “leadership by example,” establishing a vision to enhance and protect the site ecology and character, while defining the level and location of site facilities and recreational use.

CSLA Awards

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CSLA REGIONAL CITATION AWARD Project Name: South Yonge Street-Steeles Avenue to Bantry Avenue Consultant: The Regional Municipality of York Client: York Region, PM: Carmen Hui Location: South Yonge Street Category: Planning and Analysis 01

Project Summary: The South Yonge Street Corridor Streescape Master Plan is a 45-million-dollar vision to create a bold, vibrant, green, and sustainable “Main Street” in York Region. Designed to revitalize Yonge Street into a destination people travel to, rather than through, the master plan features generous pedestrian boulevards lined with street trees punctuated by strategically located urban squares, attractive medians, and intersections.

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South Yonge Street-Steeles Avenue to Bantry Avenue, York Region.

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Courtesy of The Regional Municipality of York

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OALA Awards

OALA Awards 2012 OALA Awards

Congratulations to all those honoured with 2012 OALA awards.

OALA AWARD FOR SERVICE TO THE ENVIRONMENT: The City of Toronto and its content contributors in recognition of the City’s Biodiversity Series of Booklets This award is given to a non-landscape architectural individual, group, organization, or agency in the Province of Ontario to recognize and encourage a special or unusual contribution to the sensitive, sustainable design for human use of the environment.

Education and civic engagement are necessary before people embrace an idea.

This project, the creation of a series of books on the wildlife of the city, uses civic engagement through a vast network of volunteers with a high level of knowledge and field observation skills to write and illustrate comprehensive and accessible guides to the natural world.

The series was initiated by the City of Toronto and, although the city does not fund the publication of the books, they provide staff to assist the volunteers and facilitate the writing process. They also design the graphic layout and coordinate the publication and distribution of the books. All text and illustrations are by volunteers.

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OALA CERTIFICATE OF MERIT FOR SERVICE TO THE ENVIRONMENT: The City of Thunder Bay and the Spirit Garden Design Team in recognition of the Spirit Garden at Prince Arthur's Landing This certificate is given to a non-landscape architectural individual, group, organization, or agency in Ontario to recognize and encourage a special or unusual contribution to the sensitive, sustainable design for human use of the environment.

The design of the Spirit Garden features distinct environments, ecological systems, and sustainable designs that support both active and passive human use in a public park setting. The garden includes: a Living Shoreline, the Gathering Circle, Fire Circle, Medicine Garden, and a significant public art component.

The Living Shoreline breathes life into a built environment. The original site—a constructed headland planted with trees and lawn— has been transformed into the kind of ecologically rich wetland typical to the Thunder Bay Region. Bioengineering techniques were used to rehabilitate a derelict, manmade beach into a fish habitat and naturalized shoreline. What were once sterile mineral soils have been replaced with four ecological zones to provide different habitats based on water depth to sustain fish and a diversity of shoreline plant and aquatic species. The Living Shoreline has reshaped the land within the Spirit Garden. Boulders and logs have been added, along with other natural minerals. Plants suitable to this inner harbour site have been introduced.

There is a new adjacent path through this area as well as an intimate lookout space and educational signage.

OALA RESEARCH AND INNOVATION AWARD: Sam Benvie This award, newly introduced this year, recognizes the outstanding leadership, research, and/or academic achievements of a member(s), or non-member(s), who, through scholarly activities, including academic papers, research, publications, books, e-applications or public presentations, contributes to the knowledge base that furthers the advancement of the art, the science, and the practice of landscape architecture.

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Sam Benvie is a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and Academic Co-ordinator for the Landscape Design Program at the Raymond G. Chang School of Continuing Education. His research work has focused on the adaptive management of urban vegetation and he has provided research that is used by landscape architects in Ontario on the adaptive management of urban green space and vegetation, population- and community-level urban plant ecology, and the ecology of green roof vegetation.

Sam has published many research papers and has developed a number of online courses in plant science and plant identification for both Ryerson and York Universities.

Sam offers a number of popular guided plant tours throughout the city of Toronto on a regular basis that has a devoted following.

OALA HONORARY MEMBER AWARD: Peter Simon The Honorary category of membership is for non-landscape architects Council wishes to recognize for outstanding contributions in their own fields towards improving the quality of natural and human environments.

Peter Simon, an architect who has been working at the City of Toronto for the past ten years in the Urban Forestry Department, has greatly contributed to improving Toronto’s tree canopy through many initiatives, including his direct overview of the Tree Planting Construction Details produced by the City of Toronto since 2001. He was also involved in the Steering Committee that directed the report “Every Tree Counts, A portrait of Toronto’s Urban Fores—2009,” which allowed the City to set long-term goals to increase the urban canopy. His direct involvement in the majority of streetscape projects throughout the city makes him a true steward of the urban environment.

DAVID ERB MEMORIAL AWARD: Le'Ann Whitehouse Seely The award is named after David Erb, who was an outstanding volunteer in furthering the goals of OALA and his example set a truly high standard. The award is the best way to acknowledge the one outstanding OALA member each year whose volunteer contributions over a number of years have made a real difference.

OALA Awards

Le’Ann has made an exemplary voluntary contribution to the work of the Association both here in Ontario and abroad. She is the current OALA representative to CLARB, and member of the OALA Examining Board. Le' Ann is a former member of OALA Council who served as secretary on the executive committee.

Le’Ann is probably best known for the OALA LARE Study Manuals. Although compensated for the first edition, she continues to volunteer her time to update this valuable resource, now in its 3rd edition. She conceived, developed and delivered the first LARE tutorial sessions at OALA conferences and LaBash 2008 to help candidates, and has visited Guelph and U of T regularly to give presentations on the content of the LARE and how to prepare for it.

Le' Ann’s voluntary efforts over the last ten years of service to the OALA and CLARB are extensive and have consistently elevated the professionalism and profile of landscape architects and the OALA both in Canada and in the USA. OALA PUBLIC PRACTICE AWARD: Lawrence Stasiuk from the City of Hamilton This award recognizes the outstanding leadership of a member of the profession in public practice who promotes and enhances landscape architecture by working for improved understanding and appreciation of the work of landscape architects in both public and private practice.

Lawrence Stasiuk entered public service at the City of Hamilton in May, 1990, and at that time, he was the only landscape architect in the Parks Division of Public Works. Since then, he has seen the role of landscape architects expand from traditional areas of park design and civic beautification to include areas such as streetscape design.

Lawrence has provided leadership in his workplace by developing the scoring mechanism for the City of Hamilton’s consultant roster. The Purchasing Department has indicated that the landscape architect roster

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evaluations are the most thorough of all roster categories. He was also responsible for developing standard details for the City’s Parks Development Manual as well as developing play equipment criteria.

An important aspect of Lawrence’s contribution to public practice is his strong belief in continuing education and lifelong learning.

He was the Chair of the OALA Continuing Education Committee from 2005 to 2011 and led a renewed interest in the development of educational programs for members.

At the same time, he has been known for organizing education sessions for landscape architects in his own department as well as organizing outreach sessions and inviting other disciplines in order to promote greater understanding of the role of all professionals on multi-disciplinary design and planning teams.

Lawrence has served on the OALA Council as Vice-President, President, and Past President. He has chaired and participated in numerous committees and has been the OALA representative on the CSLA Board. In April, 2010, Lawrence led a delegation of professional colleagues at the OALA Day at Queen’s Park, and met and addressed more than 30 MPs, including five Ministers.

OALA PINNACLE AWARD FOR LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURAL EXCELLENCE: Glenn Harrington This award recognizes an OALA member and his or her professional work. It singles out specific projects to draw attention to a body of work which demonstrates outstanding professional accomplishment.

Glenn Harrington is widely known for his innovative approach to environmental landscape design, and for his experience in collaborating with grassroots citizens groups on local landscape rehabilitation projects. He is the founding Principal of Harrington McAvan Ltd. (formerly Harrington and Hoyle, formerly Englar Harrington Leonard Ltd.), a member of the OALA/CSLA for 37 years, and a recipient of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects’ prestigious Carl Borgstrom Award for Service to the Environment.

As part of his ongoing commitment to community service, Glenn has participated in the review and development of many initiatives, such as: the Water Efficiency Strategy Advisory Group, the Stormwater Best Management Practices Steering Committee, the State of the Aggregate Resource Steering Committee, the Federal Government's Great Lakes Strategic Advisory Committee, the Provincial Urban Drainage Advisory Committee, the Minister's Mining Act Advisory Committee, and MTO's Drainage Design Manual Review Committee.

Glenn served as Chairman of the Water Task Force of the Conservation Council of Ontario, and was an active member of the Aggregate Resource Working Group of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources for many years. He served as the OALA Representative on the Conservation Council and subsequently served a term as President of the Conservation Council of Ontario.

Glenn is an innovator and trailblazer.

In 1982, he was instrumental in introducing soil bioengineering techniques to Ontario as a viable option for bank and stream stabilization. He pioneered the use of dormant cuttings of hardy, native plant material to stabilize soil.

Building on the work of William E. Coates, Glenn was instrumental in developing the standards for site plans for pits and quarries in Ontario by preparing Generic Site Plans for the Aggregate Resources Act. He was instrumental in having landscape architects designated under the Act as pre-qualified to prepare site plans in Ontario.

In addition to his ongoing design works, Glenn continues to pass on his knowledge through teaching and speaking engagements at Ryerson University's Chang School of Continuing Education; at Trent University; introductory courses in bioengineering for the American Fisheries Society, and other organizations.

Technical Corner

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Alternatives to Synthetic Chemicals

TEXT BY TODD SMITH

Ontario’s cosmetic pesticides ban took effect April 22, 2009.

The provincial ban supersedes local municipal pesticides bylaws to create one clear and understandable set of rules across the province. Pesticides cannot be used for cosmetic purposes on lawns, vegetable and ornamental gardens, patios, driveways, cemeteries, and in parks and school yards. In these areas, biopesticides and alternatives to pesticides can be used. Pesticides can be used in some excepted locations such as on golf courses, provided certain rules are followed in relation to applying for an exemption and in terms of pesticide application.

Since the ban’s inception, a number of herbicide and pesticide alternatives, known as bioherbicides, have come on the market, of which the current popular choice is Fiesta, manufactured by Neudorff. Other remedial bioherbicides in use include FinalSan, corn gluten, and EcoClear.

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The cultural ideal of a “perfect” lawn—a closely mown monoculture that requires a lot of maintenance—might be ready for a rethink.

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Lorraine Johnson

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Ontario’s cosmetic pesticides ban has invigorated research into alternative methods of weed control.

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Lorraine Johnson

Fiesta Fiesta Lawn Weed Killer received federal regulatory approval by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) in April 2010, and is now registered and available for use in lawns, parks, cemeteries, golf courses, and athletic fields to selectively control broadleaf weeds in turf. The active ingredient in Fiesta is iron (present as FeHEDTA at 4.43%). The manufacturer claims that Fiesta controls or suppresses the following weeds: dandelion, English daisy, false dandelion, white clover, black medic, bull thistle, Canada thistle, common chickweed, creeping buttercup, slender speedwell, broad-leaved plantain, narrow-leaved plantain, dovefoot geranium, Lawn burweed, moss, liverworts, algae, and lichens. It works by overloading the plants’ cell walls with iron toxicity (oxidative damage), thus suffocating the plant and rendering the leaves black/brown. It claims to be rain-fast in three hours; viable in a wide range of temperatures; and fastworking (according to the manufacturer, you can see results in 24 hours). Studies have been done by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs with the Guelph Turf Institute to investigate the efficacy of iron chelate in controlling broad-leaved weeds in turfgrass. The October 2009 trials concluded that coverage was vital and had to be done with a pressure sprayer to be most effective (Horticulture Review, 2010). Trials in the summer of 2011 concluded that control of these weeds may take more than two applications, or more than one season (Horticulture Review, 2012).

Technical Corner

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FinalSan FinalSan, also manufactured by Neudorff, uses active ammonium soaps of fatty acids at 22.10% to non-selectively control post-emergent grasses, mosses, weeds, and algae. It is biodegradable; works in a wide temperature range; and is rain-fast in three hours. It was registered by the PMRA in 2009.

Corn Gluten Corn gluten, a by-product of the corn milling process, is a 100% organic granular fertilizer. A protein compound in the cornmeal inhibits roots from forming in newly germinating seeds, and therefore is effective as a pre-emergent control only. It should be applied in early spring before dandelion and crabgrass seeds germinate; a minimum of two seasons’ application is needed for corn gluten to be effective.

EcoClear EcoClear utilizes high concentrations (25%) of acetic acid to non-selectively control herbaceous broadleaf and grass weeds in non-crop areas, rights-of-way, and industrial land sites. It is a post-emergent herbicide: foliar contact results in necrosis of the top growth of perennial weeds. Studies have shown consistent retreatment is necessary for complete control of perennial weeds.

The City of Toronto has employed it with success at community centre landscapes in the north-west part of the region.

Preventive While the above products are used on weeds once they appear, several preventive approaches to weed control are effective in the landscape. The first approach is to build healthier soils in new residential and commercial development. Often in new community development, the friable layer of topsoil is removed and sold. A thin layer of imported triple mix (not topsoil) is installed, and sod is laid down. What loves thin triple mix and a clay substrate?

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Dandelions! They colonize and beat the bluegrass at rooting in the disturbed site and begin to predominate. One technique to prevent this is to drag large steel claws over the landscape prior to triple mix and sod installation to aerate and break up the heavily compacted soil and provide a better foundation for the new sod. The sod thus “takes” more quickly.

Another preventive approach is the dedicated spring ritual of aerating, fertilizing, and over-seeding with lower-maintenance grass seed. Aeration introduces oxygen into the soil, facilitates water movement into the soil, and encourages grass roots to grow deeper, thus improving grass’ ability to compete with taprooted weeds such as dandelion. Over-seeding with lower-maintenance seed like fescues, ryes, and white clover diversifies the lawn mix and renders it more resilient during drought or dormancy.

Finally, regular mowing stimulates the blades to grow and produce more foliage, which thickens the lawn.

A third approach involves specifying lower-maintenance sod.

Examples of these products are: Extreme Fescue from Zander Sod; Commercial Sod from Brouwer Sod; Eco-Lawn from Wildflower Farm; and Ecolawn from Ontario Seed Company.

Weed Perceptions Perhaps it is also time (again) to challenge the notion of a bluegrass sward as the sine qua non of turfgrass landscapes.

What really bothers us about weeds in grass? Is there a middle ground between landscape perception and practicality that could allow for some biodiversity? Yes, the dandelion has over-stepped its boundaries, but hasn’t bluegrass, too? If remedial measures are government-driven, and preventive measures are professiondriven, then this perceptive approach is culturally driven and deserves a collective ponder.

BIO/ TODD SMITH IS A MEMBER OF THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD.

Notes

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Notes: A Miscellany of News and Events 02 01/

Chatelaine’s Gardening Book, written

by Lois Wilson and published in 1970, includes endpapers with the Plant Hardiness map of Canada, compiled just two years earlier.

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Courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto

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Water-colour design for Gage Park, Hamilton.

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Courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto

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On the back of the William Rennie Company’s 1918 seed catalogue was an advertisement for their “war garden collection” for just $1.00.

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Sheridan Nurseries, Georgetown, Ontario

exhibitions

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For an enlightening meander through exquisite documents in the history of horticulture, head to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto to see the exhibition How Does My Garden Grow: The Education of a Gardener. Curated

by Anne Dondertman, the exhibition, which runs until September 14, 2012, features books, nursery catalogues, seed packets, pamphlets, design drawings, and other related printed materials from Britain and Canada. With a focus on how gardeners, now and through history, have learned about plants and their care, the exhibition touches on both the artistic and scientific aspects of horticulture through the lens of direct, personal contact with plants. A beautifully designed catalogue ($25) accompanies the exhibition. For more information, visit www.library.utoronto.ca/fisher/.

Notes

books

new members

One of North America’s best-known ecological restorationists, Steven Apfelbaum, is the co-author of a recently published pair of books: Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land and Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land Workbook. The first book introduces the process and importance of ecological restoration, using specific examples from Apfelbaum and co-author Alan Harvey’s experience; the second focuses on practical matters, such as what can be done and how to do it.

Both books are available in stores and are published by Island Press.

The Ontario Association of Landscape Architects is proud to recognize and welcome the following new full members to the Association:

infrastructure A recently released report, launched at Queen’s Park in early spring, advocates for improved policies and investments to support green infrastructure in Ontario. Titled “Health, Prosperity and Sustainability: The Case for Green Infrastructure in Ontario,” the report is coauthored by the Green Infrastructure Ontario Coalition and Ecojustice, and offers specific, practical recommendations that the provincial government can undertake to facilitate the environmental, social, and economic benefits provided by green infrastructure.

To download a free copy, visit www.greeninfrastructureontario.org.

trees The connection between trees and environmental, social, and personal health has been studied for decades. A recent report published by Trees Ontario, “A Healthy Dose of Green: A prescription for a healthy population,” brings this research together in an accessible, comprehensive document that is invaluable for anyone advocating for the importance of trees in our communities. To download a free copy, visit www.treesontario.ca.

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Tiffany Brule* Greg Costa Scott Covell* Tina Fernandes* Amanda Gebhardt Allison Good Stephanie Graham* Marc Halle Adam Holland* Luke Jefferson* Terence Lee Wanli Li Derek Lough Stewart McIntosh Elnaz Rashidsanati* Nathalie Sanschagrin Neeltje Slingerland Graham Taylor Amy Tsang Kyle Yakimovitch* Mary Anne Young

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parks

Asterisk (*) denotes Full Members not having custody and use of the Association Seal.

Park People, a Toronto-based organization that advocates for better parks by facilitating neighbourhood engagement, recently released a guidebook that outlines how to create a park friends group in order to actively contribute to the well being and upkeep of local public spaces. The booklet notes that of Toronto’s approximately 1,600 parks, more than 50 already have a “friends of” group, some of which have been in existence for 20 years or more.

Such volunteer groups do crucial work to support and enhance community involvement, but often encounter similar problems in dealing with municipal regulations and similar challenges in organizing volunteer effort. The guidebook offers inspirational advice and solutions. For a copy, visit www.parkpeople.ca.

transportation

urban agriculture

Evergreen and the Institute Without Boundaries are hosting a series of five annual public expositions at the Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto. The first in the series, MOVE, which runs from May to October 2012, will explore the past, present, and future of transportation in Toronto and in cities around the world, through largescale exhibits, multi-media and interactive technologies, and life-sized physical displays. A wide range of related programming and events will accompany the exposition. For more information, visit www.evergreen.ca.

From August 15-18, 2012, the first Urban Agriculture Summit in Toronto will bring together design professionals, community groups, planners, urban growers, and others who are working to bring food production into the urban environment. With a focus on action-oriented best practices, the summit’s participants will explore urban agriculture’s current role and future potential in city building. Sessions include workshops, plenaries and panels, tours, design charrettes, and professional development opportunities. Organized by FoodShare Toronto, Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, Housing Services Corporation, Ryerson University, and the Toronto Food Policy Council, details on the summit can be found at www.urbanagsummit.com.

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Public spaces, such as Thorncliffe Park in Toronto, benefit greatly from the active involvement of "friends of" groups.

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Park People

Notes

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in memoriam ERIC PEDERSEN, OALA, MCIP, RPP

By Paul J. Bedford, FCIP, RPP, former Chief Planner for the City of Toronto Eric Pedersen was a dedicated public servant. He came to work for the City of Toronto in 1983, after graduating from the University of Guelph with a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture, and chose to stay for almost 30 years, holding various planning positions, including recently as Urban Design Program Manager in the City Planning Division for the Toronto/East York District.

He loved his work and was energized by working with so many talented colleagues.

He brought out the very best in people and radiated energy and confidence, having a unique ability to inspire others by leading and teaching them that city planning was more about “improving” than “approving.”

He was a marvelous person, a champion of good urbanism and a strong advocate of the public realm.

Eric obtained a Masters Degree in Urban Planning from the University of Washington, and became a Registered Professional Planner, which ensured that he brought a skillful planning as well as physical design approach to his work. He devoted much of his professional talent to the Toronto waterfront, and was involved with numerous urban design initiatives, including the development of the Martin Goodman Trail.

He also played a leading role in cycling by developing and installing Toronto’s first postand-ring bicycle stands, which were designed in-house by Urban Design staff.

Eric continually championed the expanding influence of Urban Design with new built form policies, city patterns and the landscape of the city that found a home in “CITYPLAN 91.” His big-picture thinking and attention to detail resulted in a spectacular list of successful projects, including: the University of Toronto Secondary Plan; the Dundas West Action Plan; the Humber River Cycling and Pedestrian Bridge; the transformation of St. George Street; Yonge Dundas Square; the Fort York Public Realm Plan; Regent Park Redevelopment; the Queen’s Quay Streescape, West Don Lands, Sherbourne Common Park, and the Water’s Edge Promenade, to name a few.

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Above all, Eric had the gift of comedy, wit, and a sense of timing that no one could match. He was wonderfully funny, and was at his very best in front of an audience.

Eric had the capacity to make you laugh at yourself and still feel great afterwards.

Eric was best friend and loving husband to Sherry (née Lobsinger), also a landscape architect and city planner with the City of Toronto, and devoted father to Tor and Avry.

He was never happier than when he was surrounded by family, friends, laughter, good food, or at the hockey arena or baseball field with his children.

Eric left Toronto with lasting legacies, and left us all with unforgettable memories. Every time you walk, cycle, and hike in Toronto’s ravines, or spend time on the waterfront, think of Eric, as he will be there, too.

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Eric Pedersen.

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Courtesy of City of Toronto

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Paul Bedford and Sherry Pedersen at the “memorial FUNraiser” for Eric Pedersen, held in June, 2012.

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Nelson Edwards

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More than 150 people attended the event in honour of Eric Pedersen.

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Nelson Edwards

Artifact

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The science of the nature/ health connection TEXT BY LORRAINE JOHNSON

The authors of the just-published book Your Brain on Nature were in Toronto recently to participate in a panel discussion at the Green Living Show, an environmental products exposition held annually in Toronto. I was heading to the authors’ presentation and running a bit late, feeling stressed over the timing and also less than enthusiastic about coming inside to an artificially lit, cavernous exhibition space when it was such a gorgeous spring day outside.

En route to the authors’ presentation, I passed through an area of the Green Living Show that had been set aside for various non-profit organizations that promote tree planting and the protection of the urban forest. The space was adorned with live trees and images of nature; I immediately felt calmer, less stressed. A few men and women wearing white coats, looking very much like doctors, were milling around in the space, carrying prescription notepads. One of them handed me a “prescription.” This “doctor’s note” instructed me to “visit a park!”

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Your Brain on Nature is a book that amplifies the compact message of that “prescription.” Surveying worldwide research on the subject of nature’s effect on the human brain, authors Eva Selhub and Alan Logan present an exhaustive array of data supporting what many of us know to be true from our own experiences: being in nature helps us feel better. If you’re looking for scientific evidence to make the case for the value of green space, trees, and contact with the natural world, dip into the book Your Brain on Nature while taking a walk in the woods or visiting a park.

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There is much scientific and medical research to support the assertion that green space is good for our health. This “doctor’s prescription,” handed out by various non-profit organizations at the Green Living Show in Toronto, encourages us to experience the healing powers of nature.

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Trees Ontario

BIO/ LORRAINE JOHNSON IS THE EDITOR OF GROUND.