Evaluating the effect of therapeutic gardens.

Sometimes the visitors to therapeutic gardens do not necessarily experience the garden the way the designers intended. A postoccupancy evaluation (POE) can reveal discrepancies between the designer's intentions and use of the environment by the actual visitors. A POE is a user-oriented assessment that elicits the opinions of the visitors to a building, facility, or environment. This paper describes a POE of therapeutic gardens at a multilevel care facility for the aged. The population included patients at various stages of Alzheimer's disease progression.