Williamsport, PA

Healing Garden Divine Providence Hospital

By stimulating the senses with color, sound, scent, and touch, healing gardens can help rejuvenate people who possess physical and cognitive disabilities or disease. Studies have shown that a person’s presence within a living environment can reduce stress and speed healing.

Larson Design Group (LDG) completed conceptual planning, design development, and construction documentation.

Adding personal sanctuaries like a healing garden can reconnect hospital patients with their innate therapeutic abilities. Aiming to set themselves apart from other facilities in the region and improve their growing oncology treatment capabilities, Susquehanna Health System requested that LDG provide site design and landscape architecture for a healing garden on the Divine Providence Hospital campus. The garden’s inspiration is based on a characteristic Central Pennsylvania mountain stream and landscape. Using a variety of native plants and strategically placing them in and around pathways and gathering spaces, a visitor’s sense of touch, smell, and sight is stimulated. A series of water features with a dry stream bed and tiered plantings helps create a holistic sense of presence and well-being in the mountains among native plants and water.

LDG provided limited on-site construction management services.

Larson Design Group fully brought our dream to life! The cancer center’s healing garden provides a mentally and physically restorative retreat where patients, family members, and visitors may ‘nurture the spirit while treating the body.’

Heather Haefner, Executive Director, Heart & Vascular Institute
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