Story Posted: 2025-07-02
Healing Through Nature: miyo-opikihitowin Garden
From the St. Paul’s Hospital and Foundation 2024-2025 Annual Review
In 2022, St. Paul’s Hospital established the Green Thumb Committee, consisting of health care professionals, volunteers, and community groups, to promote the healing benefits of nature within the Hospital. A highlight of the committee’s recent work is the miyo-opikihitowin Garden. Named by SPH Cultural Advisor Vernon J. Linklater and Elder George Laliberte and translated into Cree by Cultural Advisor Leo Yahyahkeekoot, “miyo-opikihitowin” means “a good place for growing together (knowledge and health).”
Adjacent to the cafeteria patio, the garden contains over 200 native plants and a traditional Indigenous Medicine Circle. It offers a space for patients, staff, and visitors to connect with nature, learn about Indigenous culture, and experience holistic healing.
“We created this garden as a sacred place that people, the patients and the staff and family of St. Paul’s Hospital, can come and gather together where they can experience connection and holistic restoration, learning from each other, learning about the plants in different cultures,” says Marlessa Wesolowski, Artist-in-Residence with St. Paul’s Healing Arts Program.
The garden was planted with help from community members, WILD Outside Youth Program, and the Canadian Wildlife Federation, as well as the generosity of donors through St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation. It includes the four sacred medicines of tobacco, sweetgrass, sage, and cedar, and serves as a place for ceremonies where Indigenous teachings are shared through bundle-making sessions. “While in hospital, you can’t go to ceremony on Mother Earth. We have to bring ceremonies to you. Therefore, we have plants, we have medicines, we have smudging ceremonies — all that is provided to the patients of St. Paul’s, or any Saskatoon hospital, and we do our best to bring Mother Earth to them,” says Cultural Advisor Vernon J. Linklater.
The garden supports ecological restoration and encourages a deeper connection to the Earth, emphasizing the importance of nature in health and recovery. Through the miyo-opikihitowin Garden, SPH is fostering a collaborative approach to health care that promotes holistic health for patients, staff, and the wider community.