New Market, Va. ? Ask landscape designer Nicole Kistler of Seattle about the power of gardening and she’ll tell you how it can give new hope and purpose to cancer patients and others dealing with stress.

Rachel Tschida believes healing gardens play a major role in erasing the psychological scars from torture victims, particularly those coming to Minneapolis and St. Paul for treatment.

Author Eva Shaw crusades for what she calls “nature’s health plan” after seeing its salutary effects on seriously ill children, grieving families and emotionally battered caregivers in the San Diego area.

Little wonder then, that National Garden Month, observed in April, has taken “Celebrate the power of gardening” as this year’s theme.

Aside from providing sustenance and beauty, gardens are restorative — they can transform lives, says Valerie Kelsey, president of the National Gardening Assn., organizer of the month-long event.

“You see it the most with inner-city kids,” Kelsey says. “They can experience it by growing a single strawberry. It’s forceful.

“You see it in prison gardening. It’s probably the first time in their (inmates) lives they’ve learned how to nurture something. It teaches responsibility.

“You see it in community gardens,” she says. “There you have some inter-generational things happening, a number of interactions taking place: a sharing of tools, a sharing of gardening ideas, a sharing of cultures.”

Kistler formed most of her impressions about horticultural healing several years ago while a graduate student at the University of Washington. She wrote her master’s degree thesis around the design methods used for creating rooftop gardens at the Cancer Lifeline Center in Seattle.

“Patients were working with students,” she says. “They were closely connected.

“The patients talked about the relationship of struggle, how their lives were out of control. The students listened. That made the scene organized and tangible and provided space everyone could use later.

A man walks through the brooklyn botanical gardens in new york. Aside from providing sustenance and beauty, gardens can be restorative. National Garden Month, observed in April, has taken Celebrate

“Patients were able to soothe their tensions. In the end, many were able to tell their stories. There was this huge metaphor for healing. They didn’t know what they were doing in many cases (with the gardening), but they overcame it.”

Tschida, communications director for The Center for Victims of Torture, says its Minneapolis healing garden helps clients feel safe and comfortable while sending a message to a wider audience in the Twin Cities area.

“It provides a means of talking with the community about the unspeakable horrors of torture, which can be pretty off-putting to outsiders,” she says. “It’s good outreach, a way of bringing new volunteers in. Their first access to the center can be through gardening. Once they know something about our work, they graduate from the garden to working directly with our clients.”

Shaw believes gardeners have a responsibility to get people back to the soil as a means of coping with pressure.

“People grew Victory Gardens during World War II,” says Shaw, the author of more than 60 books about managing grief and recovery. “Our new gardens will be Victory Gardens over stress.”

Shaw says she has seen how gardening helps people who are grieving, especially the elderly. “Getting into gardening doesn’t take away any of the pain, but it helps them get through the pain faster.”

Sanctuary gardens are being designed around hospices, churches, schools and jails, among other places.

“As you know, many children who enter hospitals never go home again,” Shaw says. “But their families aren’t the only ones who grieve.

“Most of the staff at the Children’s Hospital and Health Center-San Diego turn to their therapy garden for healing and solace.”

Kistler, the Seattle landscape architect, believes “any space and every space can be a healing place.”

“It should be coordinated into everything we design,” she says. “It should be a part of everyday life.”