Institute for Child and Adolescent Development

Recipient of the ASLA’s highest design honor, this garden for a clinical psychiatric practice was once utilized to diagnose and treat trauma in children and early adolescents.

Healing Gardens

Natural dendritic watercourses inspired this intensively inward-oriented and evocative landscape. A ribbon of water weaves through a series of spaces that mirror the stages of a child’s recovery from trauma—a cave-like ravine for the security of home, a woodland for exploration, a mount for climbing, an island and pond for discovery, steep and shallow slopes for challenge, and a large glade for running and playing. Unfortunately, this clinic and garden were demolished in 2006 to make way for a new residential development.

The project is an early of articulation of Reed Hilderbrand’s belief that gardens can engender emotional well-being and help us understand our individual place in larger natural and cultural orders.