Sustainable healing environments: guidelines for designing therapeutic gardens for integrated hospital care

Purpose Healthcare designers are fundamental to implementing therapeutic gardens in hospitals and healthcare facilities. They can guide clinical practitioners and healthcare decision-makers with a design plan to create sustainable healing environments for the medical treatment of their patients and a sanctuary away from the clinical hospital environment for their staff and visitors. This article presents the experience of 12 global healthcare designers, experts in architecture, landscape architecture and health planning, and how they design and establish therapeutic hospital gardens (THG) to be sustainable for clinical practitioners and healthcare decision-makers. Design/methodology/approach Analysis of these semi-structured interviews led to the establishment of guidelines for architects, landscape architects and health planners to design and establish therapeutic gardens that are sustainable healing environments integrated into hospital care. Findings These THG Healthcare Designer guidelines include five systematic steps: (1) include THG early, (2) design for hospital user needs, (3) conduct inclusive and defined stakeholder engagement, (4) draw on lessons learnt and (5) develop a comprehensive design brief. Originality/value Healthcare designers, for the first time, have five systematic steps to immediately guide the profession to work alongside clinical practitioners and healthcare decision-makers to successfully create THG. When these three sectors work together, then, THG can be sustainably integrated into the clinical hospital program, enabling wholesome and compassionate hospital care.