Inside the City of Hope Lennar Foundation Cancer Care Center and the specialty hospital opening next door in December, medical personnel and support staff focus on healing patients and assisting their loved ones.
Outside the center, there is something similar happening – from the ground up.
The serenity garden along the south side of the medical complex off Barranca Parkway is another reflection of the intentional and innovative approach City of Hope is known for.
“We know that a natural environment and sunshine are healing to patients,” says Annette M. Walker, president of City of Hope Orange County. “We will provide expert services but also create a space to calm and comfort.”
Jerico Farfan, who heads Landscape Craft Studio, accompanied Walker on a recent morning stroll through the Julia and George Argyros Garden of Hope.
While working on this project, Farfan lost both his mother and sister to cancer. He understands the value of a space that can bring some measure of comfort.
“I’m not a doctor or a nurse,” he says, “but to be able to do this means a lot to me.”
Soothing surroundings
More than 30 varieties of plants were chosen for their seasonal color and symbolic medicinal values. They include peppermint trees and blue flame agave, English lavender and California goldenrod, edible rosemary and lemon thyme, bush sunflowers and hummingbird sage.
Boulders and pine trees hint of the mountains in the distance.
There are also strawberry trees that bear tiny red fruit – an homage to the area’s strawberry farming legacy.
“We know that a natural environment and sunshine are healing to patients. We will provide expert services but also create a space to calm and comfort.”
Annette M. Walker
Greenery is an essential part of the care provided by City of Hope to patients here. Those patients joined a community planting day in partnership with Lowe’s and installed a multitude of California natives and other low-water flora when the center opened in 2022.
That same year marked groundbreaking for the specialty hospital, the key element in medical services established in Orange County to bring City of Hope’s cancer treatment expertise closer to patients in this region.
The landscaping now extends to the footprint of the six-story hospital.
Farfan pointed out the yellow foliage on a green-limbed, towering palo verde tree and the last remaining magenta rock purslane blossoms while anticipating more color as other landscaping matures.
‘Give it one more season’
Curving, open-sided benches and soothing fountains at one shady end of the garden pathway also serve a curative purpose: to sit and just be.
Even if patients can’t venture down, balconies at the end of their floors offer views of the garden.
“This is all helping to feed the soul,” Walker says. “All of this intention is that.” – Theresa Walker
