A dish garden is an indoor miniature garden which includes important features of outdoor greenspaces, such as vegetation, rocks, water features, and mulch. This study investigated the role of dish gardens on the physical and neuropsychological improvement of hospitalized children.
Fifty-four hospitalized children (age 6-15) in Iran were randomly assigned to a hospital room with a dish garden or a hospital room without a dish garden. All of the children had been admitted through the emergency department and were assigned rooms in the Rheumatology Department of the hospital. They all had the same degree of physical mobility; and no invasive diagnostic procedures were carried out during the study period. Additionally, all of the children were from urban areas of the City of Mashhad and neighboring cities. Researchers used a pre-test/post-test design to determine if children exposed to the dish garden intervention would show greater increases in physical and neuropsychological health after 72 hours than children not exposed to the dish garden.
At pre-test, the physical and neuropsychological indices of the two groups of children were not significantly different. Post-test results showed that blood pressure and respiration rates in the experimental group (group exposed to the dish garden) were significantly lower than in the control group (group not exposed to the dish garden). Post-test results also showed that children in the hospital room with a dish garden experienced less fear, anxiety, and depression, more happiness and relaxation, and better attention than the children in a hospital room without a dish garden.
This research indicates that the dish garden in the room enhanced the physical and neuropsychological health of hospitalized children. Using dish gardens, therefore, may be one low-cost way to bring nature into indoor hospital environments and thereby promote the health of children during their hospital stay.
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