Green T Healing Garden

 

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Video Transcript

Chuck Denney (UT Institute of Agriculture)
Nature that nurtures. Building a garden of beauty and comfort. These are UT students with busy schedules of classes and studying, but they’re donating two valuable things here - their time and their ability. This group called “Green T” is working on a “Healing Garden” at UT Hospital, a place where patients and their families can take a relaxing stroll past plants, flowers and trees.

Whitney Parks (Green T)
“It’s something that not only helps now. It’s going to help years down the road. Hundreds of people can enjoy it. It’s kind of like a sanctuary for people who are here sick.”

Chuck Denney
UT senior Whitney Parks is one of several members of “Green T” working on this project. The courtyard was already here, but the “Green T” kids helped clean it up by clearing old ivy, and then planting dogwoods and 600 other plants and shrubs. These students are landscaping and horticulture majors at UT’s College of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources. Parks says it’s great to take what they learn in the classroom and turn it into compassion.

Whitney Parks
“School for four years can get tough, but when you actually get to use it and not even get paid for it, just doing something good - it’s worth it.”

Chuck Denney
It’s been proven that your emotional state affects your physical body. The idea of a healing garden is stress reduction. Viewing nature’s beauty has a calming effect, and that can help someone as they face an illness. Hospital administrators approached “Green T” several months back about this project, and the students readily agreed. UT leaders believe the garden will be a place of serenity, where patients can renew their spirits and gather their thoughts.

Renee Hawk (UT Hopsptal)
“We have patients in here sometimes for several weeks with serious illness, and this will be kind of a place of respite for them. We all know that nature has a healing touch, and so that’s why it’s aptly named the healing garden.”

Chuck Denney
Several of the “Green T”members are graduating, and will soon scatter - on to a new life of career and other things. But sometimes it’s not where you’re headed, but what you leave behind. For these students, their gift will be a lasting reminder that nature can do wonders when it comes to our health

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NOTE: Area nurseries donated plants and shrubs for this project. The “Green T” students have done several volunteer efforts - including work around the UT campus, and landscaping for a woman who lost her husband in Iraq.