Healing Garden – Official Opening
The official Grand Opening of our Healing Garden included an opening smudge ceremony, a message of thanks to all involved in the garden’s creation, followed by a Spirit Week BBQ for staff, patients, volunteers, partners, donors, and other dignitaries.
We would like to thank Elevation CPA who sponsored the BBQ. Additional thanks to Herrington’s Quality Butchers for the use of the BBQ and delicious burgers and to Craig Beacock and Marilyn Beacock-White who cooked for us all.
One week prior to the Healing Garden Grand Opening, we had the honour of being guided through a planting ceremony conducted by Indigenous Elder Kim Wheatley. Sacred Indigenous medicinal plants — white sage, sweetgrass, and ceremonial tobacco — were planted alongside the existing cedar tree.
These sacred medicines were shared with us from Ajax Pickering Hospital’s Indigenous Garden and offer a cultural connection for Indigenous patients, staff, families, and all visitors who wish to engage with Indigenous cultural traditions and teachings. With Elder Kim’s guidance, hospital staff and invited guests helped make the Healing Garden a place of inclusivity and accessibility, linking us all, and now open for everyone to enjoy.
When the hospital garden came to the Port Perry Hospital Foundation’s attention, we took the matter seriously and had one key directive for the new garden – it must be designed with input from hospital users and stakeholders to truly reflect the wishes and needs of the community. People shared what was important to them in a new garden based on their own health-care journeys and stories.
- Stories like a family gathering held in the garden as a patient neared end of life so they could say goodbye as a group in the sunshine rather than at bedside.
- Stories like a daughter taking a break in the garden, a chance to breathe and reflect, during the hard days of being present while a parent was dying.
- Like the physician who said she’d once used the garden to deliver bad news in a less clinical setting because the patients would always remember this conversation.
- What it means to someone to see Indigenous sacred medicinal plants in the garden, reflecting back that this space is welcoming and one of inclusion.
The Port Perry Hospital’s Healing Garden has very quickly become a welcome healing space for all who need it and there is no doubt that nature feeds the soul and calms the spirit.
