Valley Mental Health is located in Salt Lake City, UT and is a metropolitan Community Mental Health Center serving Salt Lake, Summit, and Tooele counties. They serve about 6,000 children with mental health problems per year, most of whom are at or below poverty level. Ann Foster the Director of the Children\u27s Services at Valley Mental Health, approached the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at Utah State University for the aid in developing an inner courtyard into a therapeutic garden for their Children\u27s Outpatient Clinic. The inner courtyard would be available to children who are receiving therapy at the clinic. In order to design a proper therapeutic environment, research must first be done to examine the various aspects of therapeutic garden design including its history, research and theory and the health effects of gardens in healthcare settings
