The Therapeutic Landscapes Network is a knowledge base and gathering space about healing gardens, restorative landscapes, and other green spaces that facilitate health and well-being.
We are an international, multidisciplinary community of designers, health and human service providers, scholars, gardeners, and nature enthusiasts who believe that access to nature is an innate need and a basic human right, and that contact with nature, both wild and designed, enables people to live fuller, richer, healthier lives.
Rushland irises image courtesy of J. Alex Halderman
The TLN website is free and available to everyone who has access to the Internet. Through the website and blog, we provide:
- Information, education, and inspiration about Landscapes for Health™ (any garden, landscape, or other green space that facilitates health and well-being)
- A virtual gathering space where people can obtain and share information, inspire each other, and collaborate to design, build, fund, study, and benefit from Landscapes for Health.
Although we have a broad focus and audience, our primary emphasis is on therapeutic landscapes in the healthcare setting. We encourage the practice and use of evidence-based design (EBD). See our page on EBD for more information.
This is a network! We encourage participation, so please join us, sign up for the newsletter, leave comments on the blog, start a discussion in our forum, and make suggestions about information to add to the knowledge base.
Want to help us do what we do? See our support page to learn how.
The Therapeutic Landscapes Database is now the Therapeutic Landscapes Network!
Same great content (actually, even more than before) with more pictures, more searchability, and other improvements. Take a look around and let us know what you think!
Vincent Van Gogh painted his famous “Iris” series at the Asylum of Saint Paul de Mausole, in Saint-Remy, France, in the Spring of 1889. Allowed to roam the asylum’s grounds, Van Gogh began painting almost immediately. In a letter to his brother Theo, Van Gogh wrote: “...you will see that considering my life is spent mostly in the garden, it is not so unhappy.” That summer, he wrote: “For one’s health it is necessary to work in the garden and see the flowers growing.”
(J. Paul Getty Museum exhibit, “Vincent’s Irises,” 1999).
