Joint Commission Standard EC.8.10 requires hospitals to establish and maintain an appropriate environment. And what could be more appropriate to the needs of recovering patients, their families and friends, and hospital staff members than a healing garden? Most especially, this healing garden.

Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital is a 120-bed facility on the near west side of Chicago, offering physical medicine and rehabilitation. An addition to the hospital was built in 1998, and now, atop its fourth-floor roof, there is a 10,000- square-foot healing garden featuring 6,000 square feet of planting beds. Construction on the garden began in spring 2003 and was completed that fall.