Nursing homes : engaging patients and staff in healing garden design through focus group interviews

Patient-specific gardens can provide general benefits related to the restorative effects of nature and respond to the specific needs of a particular patient population. These needs are to be considered in the design of outdoor space for healthcare. Our goal was to design a patient-specific garden for elderly people who live in Nursing Homes and Adult Day Services (RSA Famagosta, Milano). A participatory design process was used through the organization of focus groups. A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about a topic. Focus groups allowed us to study residents and staff in a more natural setting than a one-to-one interview. With this approach, users work closely together to create a program that has been implemented by landscape architects to design a patient-specific garden. The participatory process involving designers and clinical staff and residents has been appreciated because the users felt involved in the decision process. Focus group approach has proved to be useful to provide information on healing garden user needs: the findings were useful to draw design guidelines that has been incorporated into the “garden design”.