Tree and bench project honours healthcare workers at hospitals across Canada

A new project aims to honour healthcare workers for their service during the COVID-19 pandemic by placing a bench and a tree at every hospital in Canada.

The One Bench, One Tree project was conceived by a group of students inthe University ofGuelph's master of landscape architecture program.

Alli Neuhauser, one of those students, says they were thinking about what they could do to help after reading about the impact the pandemic had on the mental health of healthcare workers.

"I couldn't imagine being a nurse in a hospital and having to run around and not really be able to catch a break from COVID because your workplace is dealing with COVID and you come home and everyone's talking about COVID," she said.

The project "is helping someone who clearly would appreciate the help and would appreciate getting that moment of rest when they can in the nature space to kind of reflect, and recalibrate, and even meditate on what's going on around them," she said.

The pandemics toll on health-care workers mental health

3 years ago

Duration 3:11

Clinical psychologist Dr. Mlanie Joanisse talks to Andrew Chang about the mental health toll the pandemic is having on health-care workers and how they can try and manage.

Bring park to workers

The plan is to use domestic trees, such as sugar, red and silver maple trees. The first 10 benches have been donated by Maglin Site Furniture based in Woodstock, Ont.

The students have installed atree and bench at two hospitals so far: Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, which saw the first COVID-19 case in the country, and St. Peter's Hospital in Hamilton, Ont.

The tree is planted two meters away from the bench on purpose, Neuhauser said, to symbolize the two meter physical distance people were told to keep between themselves and people from outside their own household. The bench also faces the tree so workers can look at it.

"They can feel some sort of calm," she said.

Neuhauser said so many people went to parks or went hiking as a way to get out of the house during the pandemic.

"I said, why can't we bring some of the park to the hospitals because these frontline workers they might not have time to go for a little stroll in a park after work," she said.

More than 1,200 hospitals

Dr. Robert Corry, a professor and graduate coordinator for the landscape architecture program, said in a news release that he was proud of the students and that they "took on this project on their own."

But it is still early days. Statistics Canada reported in 2019 that there were 1,224 hospitals in the country, so Neuhauser says they still have a lot of work to do.

"We are currently talking to hospitals in Kingston, London, Thunder Bay, Sudbury, so we're getting out there," she said.

People are welcome to support the project through the One Bench One Tree website.