An Indigenous healing garden has opened at the Misericordia Community Hospital in hopes of giving caregivers, families and patients a place to relax and reflect. The garden includes several varieties of native medicinal plants as well as a fire pit and water feature, representing elements in the medicine wheel. “The whole concept is very necessary and wonderful,” said garden organizer Corola Cunningham. “I love the fact that we’ve brought in traditional medicines that we would normally use as Indigenous people, and I know Indigenous patients, they’ll recognize them and feel more at home here.” Cunningham was responsible for reaching out to elders who contributed their ideas to the garden’s design. “When we look at healing, we look at healing all four parts of ourselves: our physical, our emotional, our mental and spiritual, and that’s what we’ve tried to incorporate here.” She said that while the growing season has come to a close, the garden is prepared to flourish in the spring. Lisa Munro, president and CEO of the Covenant Foundation, said the $345,000 project was completely funded by personal and corporate donations. “Once we heard about the scope of the project and the long-term impact and that, essentially, it would be a legacy project that would be around a really long time, we wanted to get involved, and we knew donors would support it,” Munro told CTV News Edmonton. Munro said she hopes to see elders and knowledge keepers also use the space for teachings. With files from CTC News Edmonton’s Dave Mitchell
