Drawing and Design of Therapeutic gardens and orchards: places for well-being

Abstract

The benefits that gardens and orchards provide to the well-being and physical and mental health of those who visit and enjoy them, are known since ancient times. They are places that foster sensory exchanges and encourage the emergence of interpersonal relationships because of taking a temporary hiatus from everyday life. Being at the origin of a prolific classical and medieval, Arabic and Christian literature, they have interesting associated mythologies and iconography. They also appear either as protagonists or as background in numerous artistic representations, from painting to cinema. These traditions materialized in numerous built examples that are still preserved, allowing us to get closer to the prevailing aesthetics of each era, to detect the “traveling species”, and to know how they were conditioned by the qualities of the geographical environment in which they settled. After so many centuries, the drawings of gardens and orchards are not neutral, as they are loaded with connotations and references that belong to the collective imagination and contain the experiences of different cultures. The objective of our research is to reveal this knowledge accumulated through drawing and other ways of representing gardens and orchards, and apply it to design, paying special attention to didactic, inclusive and universal accessibility aspects, and to the most vulnerable users.