Human Flower Project
Hanoi, VIETNAM
Tokyo, JAPAN
Columbus, Texas USA
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Just What the Doctor Should Order
Appendectomy? Two horticulture researchers document how flowers and foliage can hasten your recovery.
White cyclamen and cards at a hospital patient’s bedside, Louisville, Kentucky
Photo: Human Flower Project
“Get me outta here!” – the battle cry of hospital patients around the world.
Seong-Hyun Park and Richard Mattson, horticulturists at Kansas State University, have a new paper out that sheds light—and relief—on this ancient predicament. They found that having flowering and foliage plants in the room significantly improved patients’ comfort, health, and attitudes while recovering from surgery.
The researchers studied 90 patients who had appendectomies—a fairly routine surgical procedure—in a suburban Korean hospital. In half the patients’ rooms, the researchers placed twelve plants:
dendrobium orchids (Dendrobium phalaenopsis)
peace lily (Spathiphyllum “Starlight’)
golden pothos (Epipremnum aureum)
kentia palm (Howea forsteriana)
arrowhead vine (Syngonium podophyllum ‘Albolineatum’)
cretan brake fern (Pteris cretica ‘Albolineata’)
variegated vinca (Vinca minor ‘Illumination’)
yellow star jasmine (Trachelospermum asiaticum ‘Ougonnishiki’)
“Single plants of four species were arranged with two plants each of dendrobium, peace lily, golden pothos, and kentia palm.” In other words, we’re talking not just one African violet but small nursery!
Comparing the effects of two hospital rooms: A. Plantless B. Plantful
Photo: Courtesy of Seong-Hyun Park
The patients’ length of stay did not differ much (the plant group on average was released from the hospital about a half a day sooner than the non-plant patients). But the researchers did find many significant differences.
By the third day post-op, the plant-recipient group had less need for pain killing drugs. They had lower systolic blood pressure by the day after their appendectomies and reported significantly less fatigue and anxiety than the plantless patients.
“Plants were associated with positive memories, and some patients believed that plants had diminished their pain,” the scholars report. We found especially interesting that with lilies and jasmine at hand, the patients soon began taking an active interest – a not-so-small step in returning to healthy, everyday life. “As patients recovered from surgery and regained mobility, “ write Park and Mattson, “nursing and medical staff reported increased interaction with plants. This included watering plants, removing dead leaves, touching them and moving them for a better view or close to a window for better sunlight.”
From helpless “sick people,” these patients were coaxed to becoming caretakers.
At a patient’s bedside, loving wife, newspapers and flowers
Photo: Human Flower Project
Park and Mattson found that the presence of flowers and plants also significantly improved patients’ views of the hospital itself and the care they had received. (Legal departments, take note!)
As they follow up these findings, we hope the scholars will pursue some cross-cultural research. Could it be that Koreans are more attuned to plants and flowers than, say, Canadians or Moroccans, and thus can receive more healthful benefits from having flowers and foliage close by?
Many thanks to Seong-Hyun Park for sharing this fascinating research. The complete article was published in Hort Tech 18: 549-745 (2008).
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Joseph Stella’s Resolution
Restart—whether with flowers or dumb bells. It’s the season of discipline.
Abstraction
by Joseph Stella
Image: via Pomegranate
“...that my every working day might begin and end, as a good omen, with the light, gay painting of a flower.”
Joseph Stella called this his “devout wish” (My Painting, 1946)—synonymous, we’d say, with a resolution.
Have you made one? It’s already January 3rd and we’re still vacillating between grandiosity (to join a gospel choir, learn Japanese) and timidity (keep on flossing).
We came upon Joseph Stella’s resolution this fall, visiting the Smithsonian American Art Museum. His articulation of a human flower project was printed on the wall label below Neapolitan Song, painted in 1926 – four years after Stella had revisited his beloved Italian homeland.
Art & Media • Culture & Society • Medicine • (0) Comments • Permalink
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Should Cadillacs Be Forgot?
General Motors, after another near death experience, might be revived by making the vehicles of its glory days—like the flower car.
1958 Cadillac flower car
Photo: Washington Times
The cortege for Year 2008 is lined up, idling, ready to roll into history. And in that procession, we hope to spot a flower car, loaded with funereal blooms—gladiolas and white carnations.
Never heard of a “flower car”? Until very recently, neither had we – yet more evidence of how that Goliath known as General Motors has been knocked in the head.
These were some of the priciest of GM’s “professional cars” – made to carry the casket in a discreet compartment, and above that, an open deck (think El Camino) for transporting to the cemetery all those heaps of sympathy flowers people used to send.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Gardening Weenie: Surrender to Win
After nine years of meager success, little fun, and too much hideousness in the yard, we cry UNCLE, Uncle Stan.
Unconditional Surrender
to Texas weather, personal failing, Stan the expert
Photo: Bill Bishop
Shear your own sheep and card your own wool and spin your own yarn and knit your own hairshirt. Let’s hear it for DIY! Self-reliance gets a good rap, and deserves it, from anyone who as much as skimmed the Whole Earth Catalogue – also, from Emersonians, bomb-shelterites, the Amish, small children, Millennialists, and cheese-making monks. As for gardening, do-it-yourself goes without saying. Otherwise it doesn’t amount to gardening at all – you’re just possessing property and grinning stupidly at undeserved compliments.
We are all for self-reliance, except when the self is unreliable. As in Will not countenance the thought of the desert plants even though said-self inhabits what is for all practical purposes a desert environment…