Texas MHMR center lifts spirits with garden

From the Dallas Morning News:

At the Denton County Mental Health Mental Retardation facility, "hope" equals "flowers," thanks to the efforts of staff psychiatrist Bharat Patel (pictured).

He says it helps heal the mind and relieves stress. "For many people who come here, MHMR is the only hope they have left," Patel says. "If they lose that, they are hopeless. Our garden keeps hope alive."

Patel, 57, came from India to Dallas in 1980 as a young man with a wife and a newly earned medical degree. While sharpening his English and preparing for the necessary licensing tests, he began working under a physician's direction at a state psychiatric hospital.

"I would always ask the patients how they were doing, how their families were," he recalls. "By nature, I like to help people. But I never thought of practicing psychiatry."

His supervising doctor, however, thought of it for him and recommended young Patel apply for training at the University of Pittsburgh. Patel felt some trepidation: "An Easterner in Western culture? How can you be a good psychiatrist?"

Not only was Patel accepted into the university, he excelled, becoming chief hospital resident in his final year. He turned down an offer to stay in Pittsburgh in favor of returning to Dallas, where two brothers and their families already had settled.

Patel began his new career at an aging Dallas County outpatient facility. "The place was depressing," he remembers. "One day I saw a new patient sitting outside and wished him good morning. 'What's good?' he said, and pointed to a pot with a dead plant in it.

"When I was a child in India, I learned gardening from an uncle. My brothers grew veggies, but I always liked flowers. That day I promised that there would be no more dead plants." Calls to garden suppliers brought donations, and staff members agreed to help when he told them, "You don't need a green thumb – just a green heart and mind.

"The next time that same patient came back, he cried," Patel says. "I thanked him for his inspiration and the challenge, and gardening became part of my treatment plans."

When he joined the Denton facility in 1993, Patel brought rosebushes from his home garden and invited the staff to join him in breaking new ground. Together they transplanted young white crape myrtles already on the property and added pink crape myrtles and a Bradford pear tree; all have grown tall over the years. Coxcomb seeds from India grow well here, too: "Low maintenance, and they last until the first freeze,' says Patel.

Patients always admire and comment on the many beautiful flowers, says the psychiatrist, and Saturdays have become family picnic and planting events. Patel continues to bring materials from home or local garden retailers. "I know the best times to shop," he says, "and I bargain."

He accepts no money from staffers or outsiders, but spends his own: "I do this for myself. It's good karma."

Inside the psychiatric facility, Patel's own nature photographs and videos continue the garden motif, with Indian music playing softly in the background and water plashing gently in a fountain he recently installed, a purchase he made with birthday gift money.

"In an Indian temple, all the senses are involved," he says. "People see, touch, smell, hear, taste, and their moods and thinking change. Neurotransmitters put brain chemicals into harmony. This is medication. I'm known as a miser prescriber, because there isn't a pill for every problem. I work with my patients on this. Gardening that beautifies our Mother Earth rewards with the physical activity and mental relaxation that make people feel better."

At his Carrollton home, Patel has created a backyard arbor in which Buddha sits under an arch of trumpet vines and roses – flowers he also has propagated to grow in Denton. There is a grassy expanse where Lord Krishna rests near a statue of a boy and girl, their heads bent over one book.

"It gives me pleasure to see my children reading in my garden," he says with a smile. The Patels' son is now a California businessman, and their daughter is a pediatric nurse in a hospital near the family's residence.

Of the Denton MHMR garden, Patel says, "I believe we're giving our patients hope. It uplifts mood and spirit, and when they know we're doing this for them, it has more significance.

"One mentally retarded patient would never leave his mother when she brought him to the clinic. But one day, he walked away from her. He went outside – to look at the flowers."