Karen Shea, a board member for the Virginia Thurston Healing Garden on Bolton Road, was recently approached by a woman who had been a client at the garden some years before. Shea said the woman, who was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was pregnant and still in her thirties, told her, "Doctors saved my life, but the Healing Garden saved my spirit."

The Healing Garden provides complementary care to women with breast cancer regardless of their ability to pay. According to Karen Cote, director of integrative care at the Healing Garden, the support and therapies the center provides are not an alternative to medical treatment, but a complement to it. Echoing the young woman who talked to Shea, Cote said, "Medical treatment keeps our clients alive, the garden helps them live their life."

Certified horticultural therapist Jennifer Angell (far right) leads a workshop on wreath making. Before the workshop, Angell took participants out to gather wreath-making materials from the gardens. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)

What many people may not know is that this place of private solace is also a place of public connection. The Healing Garden offers to the general public its natural setting and facilities, several community programs, and opportunities for personal fulfillment that are not easily quantified.

Virginia Thurston, known to many in town as Ginny, was an avid gardener who was active in regional garden clubs. She headed the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts and served as a trustee of Tower Hill Botanical Garden. Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993, Thurston found comfort in gardening and the landscape she had nurtured for more than 30 years on their eight-acre Bolton Road property.

After Thurston died in 1999, her husband Bill asked Betsy Tyson-Smith, Ginny's support group leader, what he could do in Ginny's memory to help other women with breast cancer. Tyson-Smith suggested providing an opportunity to connect women with nature. Between Bill Thurston and Tyson-Smith, the idea of a healing garden took shape.

Thanks to the donation of two acres, a small cottage, and an initial foundation grant from Bill Thurston, the Virginia Thurston Healing Garden opened in 2001 with Tyson-Smith as its first director.

By focusing on client needs and expanding therapeutic offerings, the Healing Garden has grown to what Dr. Jon DuBois of the Bethke Cancer Center at Emerson Hospital in Concord describes as "an invaluable and rich resource...[whose] support and nurturing…go far beyond what most cancer centers are able to provide."

These services include counseling, support groups, meditation, several forms of body work—reiki, massage, tai-chi, yoga—nutrition information, bereavement support, and other programs that support healing.

Several of the programs are also offered to the community. A popular one is Harvard resident and Healing Garden therapist Pam Turci's Candlelight Yoga.

In addition to public programs, three other connections make the Healing Garden a community gem: its restorative atmosphere, its facility, its opportunities to help.

Bill Thurston has since sold his house and the grounds adjacent to the garden, but the new owners, Peter and Susan Grille, open Ginny's landscaped surroundings to Healing Garden clients and friends Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., as well as for special events. The grounds' sights, sounds, and smells can provide restorative gifts: joy, peace, comfort, company.

In winter, the Healing Garden's recently remodeled facility offers similar comforts. Inside, the soft-green walls, windows that look out on woodsy scenes, colorful paintings, and the warm and welcoming staff and volunteers are calming counterforces to outside daily stress, as if some of the garden's replenishing care could be absorbed by osmosis.

The facility itself has space that can be rented to organizations and businesses. A large, all-purpose workshop or studio space, a fire-placed garden room with three sides of windows that bring nature in, and an adjacent kitchen are ideal for meetings, workshops, or retreats.

But listening to volunteers at the garden suggests that, more than programs, grounds, and atmosphere, the connection through volunteering is the greatest benefit the garden offers to non-clients.

However they come to the Healing Garden—former clients, friends, family, happenstance—volunteers may give time, services, or more, but according to Shea, "Without a doubt, being involved in the garden, you get back more than you give."

Tucker Smith, a master gardener from Groton, saw the Healing Gardening sign while passing through Harvard five or six years ago.

"It was karma. I was meant to be there," she said.

Smith saw that the Healing Garden's two acres could use help.

"The Healing Garden rightly needed to focus its resources on client care," Smith said.

Smith presented an appeal for gardening help to regional garden clubs and to the state federation. She now organizes gardening volunteers who meet to plan for the upcoming season, plant, maintain, and perform seasonal chores.

The garden plans are evolving and help is welcomed on many fronts from professional landscapers and arborists to brand-new gardeners, from people skilled in flower arranging to organizing schedules. Volunteers are invited to give as much or as little time as they want—a few hours for fall cleanup, a few hours once a month, or more.

"It has been wonderful for me, taken me beyond the school, the town. I've made such wonderful friends," Smith said.

A serious challenge for the Healing Garden is the "without regard to ability to pay" part of its mission.

The Healing Garden, which relies on individual donations for 90 percent of its operating expenses, depends on its spring Just Cause Walk to be its biggest fundraiser. Over three days, walkers cover 60 miles to raise money through pledges. Many friendships have been forged during the walk and the weeks of conditioning that precede it.

This year, the walk will be open to tag teams that won't require individuals to cover the full distance or to walk all three days. The hope is that many more walkers will participate, making a successful event even more so.