A small, flowering corner of Kadlec offers a place of refuge for staff entrenched in hospital work or family members anxiously awaiting updates on their loved ones’ health, and it’s maintained thanks to a group of dedicated volunteers.

Kadlec’s Meditation Garden, a quiet, green and shady spot on the southeast corner of the Richland hospital, has been offering solace at 888 Swift Blvd. since 2004. The garden’s original wooden benches were nearly as old, weathered and with splinters, but now providers and family members can rest on new benches, thanks to a donation from Einan’s at Sunset. 

The funeral home spent about $6,500 on the benches and the Kadlec Auxiliary, whose volunteers run the hospital’s gift shop as well as helping to maintain the garden, donated $2,000 toward the cost of installing them. Kadlec covered the rest of the installation costs. 

Holley Sowards, director of operations with Einan’s, said “it was an easy decision for us” to donate the benches. She had connected with Lori Lott, senior philanthropy officer with The Foundations at Kadlec, in the spring and learned about the need. 

It was a case of “right place, right time,” Sowards said. She decided to pitch in by buying the benches, which will weather well, look nice and clean easily. Sowards said it’s a donation that will be meaningful for those in the garden for years to come.  

Labor of love

For the volunteers who have helped make the calming space what it is today, the work has been a labor of love. 

Some work at Kadlec, like Amy Kensler, manager of clinic operations for general surgery, and Genia Harmon, medical assistant at general surgery. 

Others, like Shelley Nielson, do not have any affiliation with Kadlec. 

Nielsen, a retiree, has been helping to maintain the garden as a part of Kadlec Auxiliary for about three months, while Harmon said she and Kensler have spent more than 50 hours working in the garden, from cleaning it up to planting new flowers. 

Kensler said she first came across the garden near the hospital’s chapel while her father-in-law was a patient and she visited the space for peace. When she later became a Kadlec employee, she realized the garden was in need of care. 

She “started to pull weeds, and one thing led to another,” she said. “… It just kind of blossomed.” 

She and Harmon come in on weekends to garden, use their lunch break to pick up bargain plants to tuck into the beds and sometimes bring in their own surplus plants, Kensler said. 

For them, it doesn’t feel like work when they come back to Kadlec on the weekend to garden. Kensler sees it as “therapeutic.” “It’s my perfect peace,” she said.

Though none of these three volunteers grew up in the Tri-Cities, they all share a deeply rooted love of gardening. 

Kadlec’s Meditation Garden is a quiet green space on the southeast corner of the medical center at 888 Swift Blvd., Richland, used by caregivers as well as the family members of patients.  

| Photo by Rachel Visick

Garden gifts

It’s also a garden full of memories. Harmon said her favorite area of the garden is the spot set aside for succulents – which she created herself. 

For Kensler, the metal wind whirligig sparked memories of a generous surgeon who had come into the garden and asked her what they needed. “We need everything,” she told him, and he pulled out his wallet to donate, asking her to buy “something nice” for the garden. She bought the whirligig. 

It isn’t the only act of generosity for the garden. When volunteers held a fundraiser with baked goods and 3D-printed objects, people “donated willingly and happily” when they found out it was for the garden, Kensler said. 

From a man waiting in the garden for nearly an hour for a phone call to a family playing in the fountain, the volunteers have seen how the garden is valued by patients, providers and more.

Seeing staff come out to the garden to relax and take care of themselves inspired Kensler to make the garden even nicer. She said it’s a change of scenery from intensive care, a place where you can listen to water flowing from the fountain at the heart of the garden and where sounds from the street seem to “just melt away.” 

“That’s the gift of it all, seeing people, how they enjoy it,” Harmon said.