Landscape Design checklist of Hospital''s Healing Garden

The purpose of this study is to develop a landscape design check list of the hospital’s healing garden. The study of discussions of previous studies about “Healing Garden” and “Healing Landscape”, and contrasting their main guidelines, “landscape elements (for example, plants, water, sun, animal…etc)” and “activity needs (spaces and facilities for sitting, walking, talking, playing, eating, exercising…etc)” were considered important dimensions that have great effects on healing. Hence, the research hypothesized that “landscape elements” and “activity needs” are correlated with “landscape benefits”. Beside this, the “landscape elements” and “activity needs” could be the major causes of landscape benefits from the natural environment. Questionnaire survey were conducted in the Taipei Medical University Wan-Fang Hospital, and participants include doctors, staff, patients and companions (N=144). The statistical analyses used the Pearson correlation to test the relationship between “landscape elements” and “activity needs”, the relationship between “landscape elements” and “landscape benefits”, and the relationship between “activity needs” and “landscape benefits”. Additionally, it also employed a one-way ANOVA to examine the mean difference of variances within each different category users. esults indicated that there is no significant difference in different categories of users in the dimensions of “landscape elements”, and “activity needs”. Significant positive correlations were found between the “landscape elements” and “landscape benefits”, the “activity needs” and “landscape benefits”, as well as the “landscape elements” and “activity needs”. The multiple regressions revealed that the “landscape elements” and “activity needs” significantly predicted “landscape benefits”. In fact, the “landscape elements” and “activity needs” must be the major considerations of the landscape design check list of a hospital’s healing garden. The check list can be used to satisfy the implication for efficiently planning future hospital’s healing space and to evaluate the healing degree in hospital’s garden environment.