Hospitals and hospices are creating pastoral retreats, places where waters run, flowers bloom and stresses fall by the wayside. A car accident that crushed Karen Muranaka's spine two years ago and left her a paraplegic threatened to take away one of her favorite pastimes: gardening. But in Kernan Hospital's rehabilitation garden in Baltimore, she learned how to plant forsythia and hyacinths from her wheelchair. And in the process, she found new hope. "Healing gardens" such as Kernan's are flourishing at hospitals, hospices and specialty clinics nationwide.

Garden construction, a small part of the $14.9 billion hospitals spent last year on capital projects, is a small investment to make given the intense competition to attract patients, analysts say. Those benefits go beyond the aesthetic. A growing body of research shows that people feel better when they see gardens, and there are specific biological responses that account for that sense of well-being.

The gardens can have trees and trellises for shade or winding paths for meandering. Most have benches and private alcoves. "Sitting there, [patients] remove their thoughts from their selves and instead think about nature," says Lana Dreyfus, a horticulture therapist with the Chesapeake Chapter of the American Horticultural Therapy Assn. "That becomes the relief—they are distracted enough by the garden and the beauty to forget about pain." Kernan Hospital also has therapeutic gardens, where patients can garden or continue their rehabilitation—practice using a new walker, for example.

As more hospitals embrace complementary and alternative medicine, healing gardens have become more common. During the last two decades, research has shown that views of verdant pastoral scenes, city parks and traditional backyards all help to calm people and reduce stress especially flowing water, has also been shown to have a mesmerizing effect. "Looking at everyday nature is quite effective in quickly promoting recovery from stress," experts say. Blood pressure drops, respiration slows and muscles relax. Brain activity shifts, indicating relaxation is taking place. Moods brighten.

Designers know how to customize gardens for specific groups. AIDS and cancer patients, for example, must avoid sun, so they need shaded gardens. Alzheimer's patients, who become disoriented, fare better in gardens with single, circular paths that have only one entryway. "Regardless of background, religion, beliefs," one designer says, "gardens serve a spiritual purpose. They offer a way to reconnect or to escape the burdens of reality."