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Butterflies in the Healing Garden
May 2006Purposefully striding about in sturdy aprons and sun hats, checking plans, moving heavy pots of plants, breaking up root balls and occasionally running into each other, the 14 volunteer gardeners had come to get the job done. Their leader was Chris LaChance, Coordinator for WaterSmart, a program funded by a grant from Houston Endowment and administered through Texas Cooperative Extension and Texas Sea Grant. In less than three hours, the newly planted garden outside the LeMaistre Clinic was ready to invite the butterflies and to offer the healing power of nature to patients.
Chris, who originally came up with the idea for the garden, is also a cancer survivor. In 2002, fresh from being told at her checkup that her ovarian cancer, first diagnosed in 1994, was still in remission, she walked out the door and envisioned a garden full of butterflies as a way to thank M. D. Anderson for her survival and give hope to other cancer patients. The metamorphosis of a butterfly from egg to larva to chrysalis to butterfly is an apt metaphor for her own cancer journey.
The spring 2006 planting is the second time around for the butterfly garden. Recent construction in the area upended much of the original work, but far from discouraged, the workers again donated time and energy to restore and expand the plots. This time Chris hired Mark Bowen, a well-known landscape designer, for the design, and in the process he too was inspired to donate time. Joseph Johnson, M. D. Anderson’s landscape manager, and his crew will maintain the area in keeping with Chris’s water-smart vision of not using chemical fertilizers or pesticides.
“It will take a year or so for the plants to fill in,” Chris was saying just as a butterfly moved in, unwilling to wait a minute longer.