Mount Auburn Hospital Unveils New Therapeutic Healing Garden for Patients And Families

Overlooking The Charles River, Healing Garden Will Serve as Restorative Space for Patients And Their Families

Cambridge, Mass. – Mount Auburn Hospital, part of Beth Israel Lahey Health, recently unveiled a new healing garden for patients and their families. The Patricia and Herbert Pratt Family Healing Garden at Mount Auburn Hospital is designed to be a relaxing, welcoming place where patients can contemplate, sit quietly and experience a visually soothing environment. Located outdoors and accessed at the lobby level of the Needham Building, the garden will feature unique plantings and sweeping views of the Charles River.

“Nature has the ability to soothe, comfort and heal,” said Jeanette Clough, president of Mount Auburn Hospital. “Our healing garden will serve as a restorative green sanctuary for patients and their families, providing stress-relief and relaxation as they spend time at our hospital for their own and their loved ones’ medical care. We want this space to provide both a mental and physical escape from the clinical hospital environment that patients and their families will find therapeutic and meditative.”

All the funds to create the healing garden have been donated by individuals and organizations in Cambridge and its surrounding communities.

“This was a real community effort,” said Kate Thompson, Chair of the Friends of the Healing Garden Committee. “A group of interested people came together to promote the plans for the Healing Garden and raised a significant amount of the $1.5 million needed to create the garden.”

This project is in keeping with several other initiatives, including a wellness center, hospital art program and music performances, to build upon the welcoming, healing environment at Mount Auburn Hospital.

Landscape architects, CRJA‐IBI Group, designed the healing garden at Mount Auburn Hospital.

About Mount Auburn Hospital

Mount Auburn Hospital was founded in 1886. A teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, its mission is to provide clinically excellent care with compassion and to teach students of medicine and the health professions.

Mount Auburn Hospital is a part of Beth Israel Lahey Health, a healthcare system that brings together academic medical centers and teaching hospitals, community and specialty hospitals, more than 4,700 physicians and 39,000 employees in a shared mission to expand access to great care and advance the science and practice of medicine through groundbreaking research and education.