The Healing Power of Gardens In the article, “The Healing Power of Gardens”, published in the Saturday Evening Post in March/April ’95, Anne Raver proposes her stance of the effects of nature on hospital patients. Raver’s purpose for this article is to show the importance of gardens in or around hospitals, and to provoke action for more hospitals to provide patients with this kind of scenery. While the gardens do not necessarily heal the patients, she claims it has positive effects on many people suffering from an illness. The targeted audience in this article would be hospital patients or anyone interested in the works of nature. Raver uses some logos in the beginning of the article by stating facts about the garden’s effects on patients.
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With each experience that she talks about, she never leaves out the precise place that the people experienced the healing of nature. She also talks about the diverse amounts of garden sceneries for people with all different kinds of illnesses. She goes into detail about how different illnesses may require different kinds of gardens. Raver gives examples of how Alzheimer patients, “need fences with hedges or vines to screen out distractions on the other side, a path that will always bring them back lo where they started, continuous lighted handrails to help navigate, and colored concrete surfaces to cut out glare.” (Raver). The special gardens for certain patients helps them not to be inclined to violence. This example makes it obvious to the readers that depending on their illness, not every patient will react the same way to each form of nature that the hospitals may provide. By giving this kind of information to the readers, it is a very positive way to persuade someone to take action. It gives the audience a sense of where and how to create the gardens. I think by proposing this data, Raver accomplishes her goal in getting people to provoke action and to have new visions for …show more content…
Each story uses ethos, by giving an emotional appeal to the readers. An example of one of the stories is about a man with schizophrenia who was once locked in a ward taking heavy medication, but now grows flowers as his source of treatment. She explains how the gardens have a calming effect on a lot of patients, and also how the office buildings face some form of nature too, which keeps the workers relaxed as well. Some consultations even take place in a greenhouse to make the patients not as anxious and to calm their nerves. This is an effective way for the author to persuade the readers about her purpose for the article. Another anecdote in the passage was about a patient herself who decided to build more healing gardens once she was released from the hospital. By showing how meaningful it is to some patients to have that kind of scenery around them while in such a negative environment, it may encourage some readers to take action in creating more
With each experience that she talks about, she never leaves out the precise place that the people experienced the healing of nature. She also talks about the diverse amounts of garden sceneries for people with all different kinds of illnesses. She goes into detail about how different illnesses may require different kinds of gardens. Raver gives examples of how Alzheimer patients, “need fences with hedges or vines to screen out distractions on the other side, a path that will always bring them back lo where they started, continuous lighted handrails to help navigate, and colored concrete surfaces to cut out glare.” (Raver). The special gardens for certain patients helps them not to be inclined to violence. This example makes it obvious to the readers that depending on their illness, not every patient will react the same way to each form of nature that the hospitals may provide. By giving this kind of information to the readers, it is a very positive way to persuade someone to take action. It gives the audience a sense of where and how to create the gardens. I think by proposing this data, Raver accomplishes her goal in getting people to provoke action and to have new visions for …show more content…
Each story uses ethos, by giving an emotional appeal to the readers. An example of one of the stories is about a man with schizophrenia who was once locked in a ward taking heavy medication, but now grows flowers as his source of treatment. She explains how the gardens have a calming effect on a lot of patients, and also how the office buildings face some form of nature too, which keeps the workers relaxed as well. Some consultations even take place in a greenhouse to make the patients not as anxious and to calm their nerves. This is an effective way for the author to persuade the readers about her purpose for the article. Another anecdote in the passage was about a patient herself who decided to build more healing gardens once she was released from the hospital. By showing how meaningful it is to some patients to have that kind of scenery around them while in such a negative environment, it may encourage some readers to take action in creating more