Healthcare Design - October 2014 - 39

L ANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE COMPE TITION

The oval walkway in Anne's
Garden accommodates people
who explore the garden
from wheelchairs and is
wide enough for visitors to
stroll together hand in hand.
Benches provide both sunny
and shady places to sit in the
midst of colorful perennials
and lush groundcover.

HCDmagazine.com 10.14

plenty of shade, enclosure, and privacy.
The competition jurors liked how the gardens provide significant places of respite for the facility, with
numerous gardens at a single campus. The three
gardens near the North Patient Tower allow users to
meander; as visitors walk through one garden, they
ultimately encounter the entrance to the next, encouraging them to seek what's next. All gardens are
fully accessible and have many benches and chairs
distributed throughout to allow opportunities for rest.
Though open to all visitors, The Pope Family
Garden is directly accessed from a labor and delivery
waiting area and was designed to be a natural
gathering place for expectant families, an outdoor
destination where a newborn's arrival can be
awaited. Small cast-bronze animal sculptures are
strategically tucked here and there for discovery by
youngsters.
Another notable feature of the gardens overall is
in the dozens of plants used throughout-more than
80 varieties in the Wilheit-Keys Peace Garden and
60 in Anne's Garden. Color and texture, Fockele

In the Wilheit-Keys Peace
Garden at the Northeast
Georgia Medical Center in
Gainesville, Ga., shrubs, trees,
perennials, and groundcover
bloom throughout the year.
Even in the winter visitors can
find a place to enjoy variety
in colors and contrasting
textures.

THE FOCKELE GARDEN CO.

Recognizing that healing goes beyond the
bedside, the hospital's goal was to create outdoor
environments that promote hope and healing for patients and families, visitors, staff, and the community
at large. The concepts, designs, and materials used
in these four gardens create a comforting environment for patients as well as all those around them
who may be affected by an illness.
The planning for the four gardens began in
tandem with the initial planning for the North Patient
Tower; the foundation evaluated and identified outdoor destinations to enhance the campus but also
to offer opportunities for signature gift-naming.
The conceptual designs for two of the gardens,
Nell's Prayer Garden and Wilheit-Keys Peace
Garden, were developed by Stephen Sanchez, a
principal with HGOR (Atlanta, Ga.), a planning and
landscape architecture firm. Likewise, The Fockele
Garden Co. (Gainesville, Ga.), a landscape designbuild-maintain firm, completed the conceptual
designs for the other two gardens, Anne's Garden
and The Pope Family Garden, as well as the planting
designs and detailed plans for all four gardens.
Donor support for the gardens, including a maintenance endowment, was upwards of $2 million,
with the initiative accomplished exclusively through
philanthropy, Colston says.
Beyond financial support, the donors offered their
personal experiences with gardening and a love of
the outdoors to shape each garden's features, right
down to an heirloom climbing rose handed down
over several generations and an old-fashioned blue
mophead hydrangea-both donated and now thriving in Nell's Prayer Garden.
"Each garden had to have some individuality,"
says Mark Fockele, a principal and founder of The
Fockele Garden Co. "But at the same time, there
had to be continuity between the gardens." That
continuity is achieved with planting selections, hardscaping, and furniture. The gardens also provide

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Healthcare Design - October 2014

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