Persian Garden as Healing Garden An Approach with Islamic Influences

Abundant studies have shown that, spending and attending long-hours in health centers is regarded as a stressful experience for patients, visitors, and staffs. Therefore, many researchers have considered and noticed using the nature in health centers as an approach to decrease environmental stresses and improving the environment quality. Their findings denote the issue that using landscape and creating the possibility to access the nature for users of health centers can provide a calming environment and also would be effective in patient’s improvement process.

Now in the present study, in order to emphasize the use of nature in the country's health centers and to have a more profound look to the issue, role of the nature in human's healing and its reason, have been investigated using Islamic resources and by applying a descriptive-analytic method. Then, to provide a practical approach the possibility of implementing Persian garden pattern, as a healing garden in hospitals, has been evaluated.

At first, comprehensive characteristics of a healing garden in hospitals were explained and then by reviewing and analyzing the related scientific literatures, conformity of these characteristics to a Persian garden pattern were investigated through two approaches. 1- Description and analysis of the existing library documents
2- investigation of the experts’ attitude through a questionnaire.

In the research findings, the effect of nature on human’s health according to the Islamic sources was described and the causes of these effects were also mentioned. In the Islamic sources, abundant literature emphasizes and focuses on the positive effect of nature on human’s health and use of it for human’s healing is theoretically a proper issue. Thus, relationship with nature can play a positive role by guiding the internal sources of treatment in human, along with the medicine (external treatment sources). Findings of the present study indicate that this effect may be due to some reasons such as a common origin and existential domains and also stimulation of human’s powers and senses. Therefore, if human’s five senses emphasized in designing, effect of the nature on human’s health would be more effective.
Healing gardens are those gardens which do not only have aesthetic function, but also due to the association they make with users, they lead in healing of physical and especially mental patients and at a higher level, they prevent from illness in the human. According to article reviews, the following nine features can be mentioned as the characteristics of a healing garden in hospitals:1. Providing access to the nature and interaction with it
2. Creating an opportunity for selection, privacy and experience in having control over affairs
3. Creating an environment for getting together and social interaction
4. Creating a space for physical activity (walking)
5. Meeting others
6. Silence and being away from mechanical and machine noises
7. Peace and security
8. Readability
9. Creating positive and clear features
Comparative study of the pattern of Iranian gardens with the above-mentioned features was performed based on the evaluation of the existing documents, Iranian garden is an appropriate pattern to be applied in design ideas of healing gardens in hospitals.
Subsequently, experts’ views in this regard were investigated. According to the experts’ view, the most important result of this section of the study is the high level conformity (90/13%) of the Iranian gardens to the characteristics of a healing garden. The highest percentage of conformity related to the readability feature (98/2%) that distinguishes Iranian gardens from other patterns such as Japanese gardens.
According to the experts, after readability, “providing the accessibility to the nature and interacting with it” is the most important feature of the Iranian gardens in the present study. The reason for this may be the profound association of the Iranian gardens with plans and water, stimulation of all human’s senses by environmental factors, thoughtful selection and planting of flora.
In this study, two features of “creating an opportunity for selection, privacy and experience of having control over affairs” and “peace and security in Iranian gardens” had the lowest percentage of conformity (78/2 and 77/4%) based on the experts’ view. Of course, in general, higher than 75 percent of conformity indicates a high capability in providing the intended feature but the percentages of these two features being lower than other features can be attributed to the orthogonal geometry, symmetry and high readability of Iranian gardens. In a regular geometric pattern, there is a lower spatial diversity compared to what is observed in non-artificial nature or Japanese gardens. With respect to the high readability and clarity of the Iranian gardens, fewer cozy and far from public sight spaces have been formed and generally speaking, there are fewer private areas to be chosen by users.

Now, if it is decided to apply the pattern of Iranian gardens with a healing function in medical centers, in order to enhance the efficacy and efficiency of a garden, the designers are required to improve private areas and provide users with more spatial diversity for selection with committed innovation and adoption of thoughtful solutions. Moreover, the interested people and researchers can investigate reinforcement and improvement of the two features of “private areas” and “spatial diversity” in Iranian gardens as a useful research issue.