Hospital gardens help promote community well-being

Beaver Dam Community Hospital in Beaver Dam, Wis., uses its organic gardens to help stock the salad bar, but also to promote health and happiness among its patients and residents. The gardens began five years ago when employees planted the original, and largest, garden behind the hospital, according to the Daily Citizen.

The program is part of the hospital’s wellness program called Blue Zones Project, a community well-being initiative sponsored by the hospital. Various departments under the hospital’s umbrella—Kids Care, Hillside Manor, Eagles Wings and Remembrance Home—have gardens that are maintained by patients and residents at those sites.

“In the Remembrance Home, you can really tell when they are working in the garden that it triggers something from their life,” said Linda Klinger, director of rehabilitation services and wellness and a Blue Zones leader at the hospital. “Those skills never go away.”

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