After nearly five months of renovations, Texas Children’s recently opened an outdoor play garden for patients and their families so they can relax and have fun during their visit or hospital stay at Texas Children’s.
“The hospital can be a stressful environment for patients and their families,” said Rene Hoelker, a project manager for Texas Children’s Facilities Planning and Development. “The play garden provides a relaxing retreat for them to get away from their daily task of being in a patient room and actually enjoy their time here.”
Located outside the Abercrombie Building, a beautifully hand-painted mural greets visitors as they enter the Merle C. Donigan Play Garden. The play garden features a colorful display of child-friendly play pieces, musical instruments and plenty of shade structures, benches and lush landscape for optimal relaxation. Heat-resistant turf – green simulating grass and blue depicting rivers – keeps the ground cool during the hot weather.
“All of the play pieces were carefully designed to ensure our patients – whether ambulatory or confined to a wheelchair – can easily access the amenities offered in the play garden,” Hoelker said.
One of the biggest design challenges of this renovation project was figuring out how to creatively conceal the exhaust travelling from the underground parking garage into the play garden. Instead of just building a wall to mask the entry point, the Facilities Planning and Development team collaborated with a local muralist to transform this wall into a carefully designed piece of art.
“We started to think about what themes we wanted to design,” Hoelker said. “We came up with the four seasons. As visitors walk around the mural, it transitions from summer, spring, fall to winter.”
Muralist Sebastein Boileau and his team spent countless hours hand designing and painting the mural as well as the light tower, which illuminates the play garden at night with different shades of color depicting the changes in season.
“Since this is for the children, we incorporated a lot of animals and fun colorful elements in our mural design,” said Boileau. “We hand painted from the background to the foreground the same way you would a painting. We approached this project more like a big painting rather than a mural.”
Patients and their families in Abercrombie can also view the play garden from their patient room window. For patient families like Madison Fitzgerald, she is thankful to have this space available for her son and other children at the hospital.
“In the middle of the medical center, all you see are hospitals,” Fitzgerald said. “To see something bright and fun for the kids, something that they can enjoy that is not so scary, is a huge benefit.”
The new Abercrombie play garden was named in memory of the late Merle C. Donigan, a long-time Texas Children’s Auxiliary member who graciously donated funds to support this renovation project.