The Dr. Sanford and Lois Benjamin Healing Garden is a welcome haven enhanced and architecturally engineered using Bomanite Imprint Systems with Bomacron decorative concrete patterns installed by licensee, Carolina Bomanite. What used to be a plain gray concrete pad adjacent to the emergency room waiting area at Carolina Medical Center-Mercy in Charlotte, NC, is now a beautiful 4,000 square foot garden where loved ones and hospital staff can relax and heal. The serene area has a courtyard, sitting areas, walkways and plenty of landscaping.
Carolina Bomanite worked carefully with the Landscape Architect, Bloc Designto turn the space into a tranquil garden, designed with intentional and specific elements that aid in therapeutic benefits to all cognitive aspects of a person including emotional, physical, and spiritual. The 1,500 square feet of Bomanite imprinted concrete has multiple textures, colors, and patterns including Bomacron Regular Slate and Bomacron Small Sandstone. Pebbles and stones were strategically placed and included into the walkways to provide a tranquil, but easy to navigate setting. The text in the decorative concrete circle was “etched” into the concrete and Bomanite Con-Color was used to highlight the thought provoking words.
A donor wall recognizes the people who supported the donor funded project. Prominent in the garden is an outdoor pergola, a vegetated vertical wall (called a Living Wall), focal point sculpture, lush vegetation, and seating. As stated in this Charlotte Observer article, “The garden is meant to be a healing space where staff and caregivers can take a break and where patients and family members can come to get out of the hospital atmosphere and heal. Patients who are waiting for test results or recovering from surgery may find the garden to be a peaceful environment during stressful times.”
During construction, the location and access to this small area directly outside of a busy hospital emergency entrance created a difficult work environment for the crew. Most days their trucks had to park two blocks away in a small back lot behind the hospital. From seemingly chaotic stressful challenges of the construction site emerged a truly beautiful healing garden that features gorgeous decorative concrete for this busy uptown hospital. The Bomanite Imprinted Concrete System is not only pleasing to the eye, it obviously also helps in the healing of body and spirit for patients, visitors and staff.
