Healthy Meritus Gardens: 'A place to find some peace' amid hospital stress

Around the corner from an often-hectic emergency room and tucked behind a wing where COVID-19 patients are treated, there are flowers and vegetables taking root.

Growing plants is the product. The goal is to help people.

"This is the Healthy Meritus Gardens, and the idea behind it is to give our staff an opportunity to be outside, have some joy at work, have a peaceful, quiet place just to enjoy themselves, build friendship, build community and plant some flowers and some vegetables," said Jessica Casey, director of volunteer services at Meritus Health.

"I love gardening, and I find it to be a very peaceful experience," Casey said. "And watching all of our staff really struggle the last two years due to the pandemic, I thought it would be a really nice thing for the hospital to be able to give them a place to find some peace and kind of recuperate from a really hard time."

Volunteers have led the effort, with the help of donations and the Meritus Foundation. The wooden-framed garden beds sit in a grassy area between a parking lot and a regional infectious disease containment unit, where staff members care for patients with COVID-19 and similar ailments.

There are more than 20 garden beds. More than 60 staff members and about 10 volunteers have signed up for garden spaces.

Casey said many of the beds are maintained by teams, "which is really cool" because it goes to the goal of creating social time and building friendships.

The gardeners also get to choose how they will deal with the fruits of their labors, Casey said.

Some of the gardeners might take vegetables and flowers home to their families. Others might donate them. And some might share the harvest with fellow staff members.

The hospital already has a few "unofficial communal veggie tables" in various departments where staff members drop off home-grown vegetables for others to take, according to Casey.

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Meritus President and CEO Maulik Joshi praised the volunteers.

"I think this is just a great example of our team coming together to take care of each other and to do stuff for our community. That's really the cool part of this," he said.

Mike Lewis covers business, the economy and other issues. Follow Mike on Twitter: @MiLewis.