Mental health disorders such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and paranoid schizophrenia affect masses of people worldwide. These conditions not only challenge individuals but also deeply affect their relatives and communities. While clinical treatments remain essential, there is increasing recognition of the therapeutic role landscapes can play in supporting mental health recovery.

Historically, nature was a central component of healing in hospital and asylum design, but many modern organizations have lost this connection. Research increasingly supports the integration of therapeutic outdoor spaces in mental healthcare environments, showing how access to nature can reduce stress, improve mood, and foster a sense of calm and connection.

As a landscape architect with a deep interest in healing environments, I believe therapeutic gardens are not luxuries, they are essential. These spaces can serve as gentle interventions that invite patients into moments of reflection, grounding, and dignity.

My Personal Journey

My commitment to healing landscapes stems from both personal experience and professional practice. Growing up between Jordan and Lebanon, I’ve witnessed the devastating mental health toll of political instability and conflict. While living and working in Beirut, in the neighborhood of Achrafieh, I often saw elderly people speaking quietly to themselves in the street. What appeared like a quirk of aging revealed itself as a deeper reflection of trauma.

Earshot stories of families torn apart by conflict, children sent away without a clear future, relatives on opposing sides, and lasting scars of loss, deeply affected me. These stories raised an important question: Could landscape architecture offer more than aesthetics? Could it help restore safety, dignity, and hope for those affected by trauma?

Personally, I grew up in a neighborhood where people shared stories in whispers, often revealing pain that had been carried for decades. I remember a woman telling me how she lost contact with her children during the war and never heard from them again. These lived realities stayed with me. They continue to shape my belief that landscape architecture can be a form of healing, storytelling, and resistance.

This became the foundation of my thesis, HEALTHSCAPE, a research-based design study focused on the healing potential of therapeutic gardens for people living with PTSD, depression, and schizophrenia. The site for the project was the Hôpital Psychiatrique de la Croix in Bqennaya, Lebanon, a psychiatric hospital with a long history but minimal access to therapeutic outdoor environments.

Site Impressions: Hôpital Psychiatrique de la Croix

In Lebanon, I came face-to-face with a question that changed the course of my work: Can landscape architecture do more than beautify space? Can it help people feel safe again?

This question emerged while I was living and working in Beirut, where I often saw older people muttering to themselves on the streets of Achrafieh. What seemed at first like a simple quirk revealed itself to be a collective echo of war, memories of loss, displacement, and trauma carried quietly in public spaces.

That realization inspired my thesis, HEALTHSCAPE, a research-based project grounded in the specific needs of individuals with PTSD, schizophrenia, and depression. My site was the Hôpital Psychiatrique de la Croix in Bqennaya, where I studied existing outdoor conditions, some of which you’ll see in the photos below, and proposed healing gardens rooted in cultural sensitivity, clinical insight, and emotional care.

This work is deeply personal. It’s about listening to people, to place, to silence. It’s about creating outdoor spaces that aren’t just “nice,” but necessary. Spaces that offer dignity to people living with invisible wounds. Spaces that restore a sense of control, peace, and presence.

Understanding the Need

Mental health disorders such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and paranoid schizophrenia affect millions worldwide. These conditions not only challenge the individuals experiencing them but also deeply impact their families and communities. While clinical treatments are essential, there is growing recognition of the powerful role that healing landscapes and therapeutic gardens can play in supporting recovery.

Historically, hospitals and asylums integrated nature as part of the healing process, but modern clinical designs often neglect this vital connection. Yet research confirms that access to natural, thoughtfully designed outdoor spaces can reduce stress, improve mood, and enhance recovery. Healing gardens are no longer optional extras but vital components in mental health care environments.

My passion for healing landscapes grew from my own experiences. I grew up between Jordan and Lebanon, two countries that have seen conflict, resilience, and a strong relationship with the land. In the middle of civil unrest, I witnessed how public and private spaces shaped people’s sense of safety, dignity, and identity. That insight lives at the heart of my work today.

Healing Through Design: Disorder-Specific Approaches

When I began this work, I didn’t just want to create beautiful spaces, I wanted to understand how landscapes could actively support healing for people living with mental illness. I spent time learning from published research, but also went deeper. I interviewed mental health professionals, including psychiatrists and therapists who work closely with patients living with PTSD, depression, and schizophrenia. I read clinical case studies. I spoke with people who had experienced these conditions themselves. And I listened.

These conversations, combined with site-specific analysis at Hôpital Psychiatrique de la Croix and my own design experience, shaped how I approached each space. What might seem like a minor design detail to some, a path’s width, a plant’s scent, the position of a bench, can carry deep emotional weight for someone in distress. The placement of a seat, the way light moves across a surface, or the tone of a paving stone can influence whether a space feels safe, overwhelming, or comforting.

So I focused my thesis on three conditions that deeply affect perception, orientation, and emotion: depression, PTSD, and paranoid schizophrenia. What follows are not universal solutions, but carefully crafted design responses, each rooted in research, empathy, and the belief that good design can hold people in their most vulnerable moments. These gardens are not designed to impress. They are designed to offer stillness when everything feels loud, softness when the world feels hard, and rhythm when time has fractured.

In each of these design responses, the goal is not to cure, but to care. Not to guide people through a fixed path, but to offer presence, dignity, and space to be. Sometimes healing begins not when we ask people to change, but when we build spaces that allow them to feel seen, as they are, without expectation.

Depression: Inviting Life Back In, Reconnecting Through Sensory Engagement

Depression often brings feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and social withdrawal. Landscapes designed for people living with depression should be rich in sensory engagement and symbolic meaning.

Color becomes a crucial tool, bright flowers like sunflowers, lantanas, and lavenders offer visual stimulation. Evergreen trees and shrubs maintain life across seasons, subtly suggesting that life goes on. Wildlife such as butterflies and birds are attracted by native plantings, bringing movement and life to the garden.

Interactive zones like small gardening plots or raised beds give users a sense of purpose. The act of nurturing a plant, however small, can restore a sense of agency. Quiet nooks and winding paths provide areas for solitude and self-reflection. It’s not about distraction but reconnection, to time, growth, and self.

This garden does not demand healing; it simply offers the conditions in which it might begin.

PTSD: Building Safety and Clarity

For those living with PTSD, unpredictability can be deeply triggering. A sudden turn, a tight space, or unclear sightlines can activate intense emotional responses. The body stays alert long after danger has passed. In gardens for individuals dealing with PTSD, safety is the design’s first language. A garden should have predictable, clear paths, visible boundaries, and a soft, sensory experience. Surfaces underfoot should be smooth and consistent. Spaces should avoid surprises or blind corners.

Shaded alcoves with benches allow moments of rest, always oriented toward visible exits. These are not places to hide, but places to pause, without the pressure to engage. Water features can offer calming, rhythmic sounds that ground the nervous system. Plantings should have soft forms and movement, nothing too sharp, stimulating or aggressive. Paths are direct and open, with long sightlines and no blind corners. Non-slip surfaces like broom-finished concrete and natural stone ensure smooth, predictable movement. Low hedges, such as boxwood or myrtle, softly define edges without enclosure. The experience of the garden must reinforce trust and calm.

This garden is not performative. It offers trust, repetition, and clarity, inviting users to feel safe in their bodies again.

Paranoid Schizophrenia: Offering Simplicity and Grounding

Paranoid schizophrenia often involves hallucinations, delusions, and extreme sensitivity to environmental stimuli. This calls for graduated spaces. Enclosed, private garden rooms with green walls or plant screens can provide initial refuge. Gradually, users may feel comfortable moving into semi-private spaces, then larger communal areas.

Therapeutic tools here include textured surfaces for tactile grounding, low-level lighting, and white noise from water or wind. Seating options vary by orientation, some face others for group activities, while others face walls or greenery for introspection. The goal is flexibility and choice, creating an environment that meets users where they are.

The design could introduce a three-phase spatial journey, allowing users to engage at their own pace:

– In Phase One, patients enter a soft landscape with clear boundaries and gentle greenery, offering space to observe and settle.

– In Phase Two, the garden opens to accommodate small groups, encouraging light interaction through shared pathways and visual connection.

– Phase Three brings users deeper into the planted environment, fully surrounded by nature and subtle sensory cues.

Each phase is optional and fluid, time spent in each zone is entirely up to the patient, respecting the non-linear nature of healing. Some may linger in one space for weeks; others may move more freely.

The garden can also leave room for gentle movement and activity, spaces that could host yoga, stretching, or simply rest in the sun. Its goal is not stimulation, but stability. A space where perception can settle, and reality can gently be trusted again.

Context Matters: The Lebanese Site

The Hôpital Psychiatrique de la Croix offered a complex and very real test site. Its architecture is formal and imposing, and the outdoor areas feel incidental rather than intentional. Most patients spend their days indoors, with minimal access to nature.

In the few places where trees grow and patients have moved chairs beneath them, one sees a quiet plea for refuge. Even in unmanaged corners, the desire to be near something green is palpable. These micro-acts of reclaiming space reflect a universal truth: we all seek connection with nature.

Other parts of the site are stark. Concrete expanses, drainage pipes, and waste bins dominate. It is a harsh environment, and the absence of a designed landscape feels like a deeper neglect, one not of aesthetics but of care. Healing begins with being seen. These spaces fail to see their users.

A Personal Reflection

This project reshaped me. It taught me that beauty is not always about symmetry or color. Sometimes it’s about knowing that someone thought about your comfort, your safety, your story. Sometimes beauty is a bench beneath a tree.

At the heart of this work is dignity. To offer a person struggling with mental illness a peaceful place to sit, a flower to notice, a bird to follow with their eyes, these small gestures accumulate into something powerful.

Real-World Lessons: Hôpital Psychiatrique de la Croix Hospital

I also had the opportunity to support a healing garden initiative at Hôpital Psychiatrique de la Croix Hospital, another mental health facility in Lebanon. Here, the challenge wasn’t just design, it was logistics, advocacy, and coordination. Funding was tight, stakeholders were unsure, and the clinical world sometimes sees outdoor space as a luxury.

But we persisted. We created areas with shade, softness, and beauty. And patients responded. They sat outside more. They talked. They planted. Therapists reported better moods and more productive sessions. The garden became a partner in the therapeutic process.

Final Thoughts: Toward a Culture of Healing

I believe healing landscapes must be part of how we reimagine mental health care globally. They are not mere amenities but essential layers of treatment. They offer something no pill or therapy can: a reminder that life is bigger, that the world still holds beauty, and that one’s presence within it matters.

The work I’ve done in Lebanon is only the beginning. I hope to continue advocating for landscapes that listen, soften trauma, and invite people back to themselves. My design process is rooted in empathy, research, and respect for culture.