This study used a narrative inquiry approach to explore hospitalized children's experience of a Fairy Garden (FG) in Northern Thailand. Narrative inquiry examines human experience through storytelling (narrative) methods. This approach, when used with children, recognizes the child as agent of their own experience. Narrative inquiry can be viewed as both methodology and phenomenon. For this study, the children's experience of the FG was the phenomena under investigation. The methodology was based on a visual arts process of draw, observations, and talk.
Seventeen hospitalized children (4-13 years of age) participated in the study. The length of hospitalization ranged from two to seven days. Some of the children had numerous hospital admissions. Participating children had access to an outdoor fairy garden with plants, walkways, play equipment, a bridge, gazebo, and other child-friendly features. The children were invited to draw pictures of their experience in the FG and to talk to the researchers about their drawings. One of the participating children chose not to draw a picture but still talked about the FG experience. While the children were drawing, the researchers made observational notes about how long the children drew, expressions on their faces, and the colors used for the drawings. Data analyzed for this study included the children's drawings, the researchers' observations, and the conversations with the children after they completed their drawings.
Five interrelated threads emerged from an analysis of the data: (1) representations of the illness experience; (2) imagination and fantasy; (3) connection to place, family and home; (4) moments of social representations of play; and (5) happiness and enjoyment. The thread of happiness and enjoyment appeared to be the strongest of the threads. All the children talked about how the garden made them feel happy and joyful. They described the garden as a “beautiful place to come and play as there were nice things to see and do.”
These findings indicate that the FG, by providing an environment of play and fun, gave the children an escape from the biomedical and clinical environment of the hospital. It can thus be argued that natural environments can add a humanizing element to the care of hospitalized children.
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