A statue of St. Francis of Assisi overlooked the Saint Francis Medical Center Healing Garden.

St. Francis Medical Center wants patients and their families to find healing outside the hospital's walls as well as inside.

The new Healing Garden lets patients and their families find a little peace and quiet away from the often stressful hospital environment.

More and more hospitals across the country are adding healing gardens and similar areas, said Bill Kiel, director of St. Francis' Foundation, which built the Healing Garden.

"When you look at why people come to hospitals, it's not the best time in their life," Kiel said. "They need a place to get away. We were fortunate enough to have a space that would allow people to be away from the hospital without being too far."

The garden includes several "indoor rooms" featuring special plantings, seating and tables and chairs for eating outdoors.

"There's really four or five natural setting areas where people can go and get away without being too far away," Kiel said.

The garden also features fountains and a wide variety of trees, flowers and shrubs.

"We wanted a combination of sight and sound, so there's music that plays 24 hours a day," Kiel said. "We have three different fountains, so there's the soothing sound of water that's constantly there, and we have a wide variety of plants, bushes, shrubs and trees that in time will provide shade and shelter."

Plantings include azaleas, butterfly bush, Burford holly, Japanese maple, Kousa dogwood, mock orange, dogwood, red oak, red maple, southern Magnolia, shrub roses, spirea, crape myrtle and bayberry.

The idea for the Healing Garden was developed by hospital employees, Kiel said.

"The group decided that it was a great opportunity to talk about the concept that the Sisters of St. Francis brought, and that concept was that a hospital should heal the mind as well as the body," he said.

"We figured we were doing a real good job on the body, but when people came into the hospital, it was a very traumatic time in their lives, and we needed to work on healing the mind. They needed a place to go that wasn't sterile, that wasn't antiseptic, that wasn't four walls."

Visitors to the Healing Garden are issued beepers so that medical staff or family can keep in touch with them, Kiel said.

"I think what we're trying to do is give folks as much freedom as possible," he said. "People have been able to come out here in the middle of the night, and there are no car sounds. There's no sound at all except for the music and the fountains. It's a chance for them to come to peace with some real tragic times in their life."

The Healing Garden was built around an existing memorial to Julie Hutteger and Karen Scherer, hospital employees who died in a 1988 helicopter crash south of Cape Girardeau.

The hospital's auxiliary commissioned a bronze statue of St. Francis from Ortisei, Italy, that now stands in the garden.

A local family is also commissioning a bronze statue of an angel in memory of their daughter, who worked at the hospital.

Other memorials may also be added, Kiel said.

The garden "gives people a lot of different opportunities to get this healing spirit," he said.

The Most Rev. John J. Leibrecht, bishop of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese, was on hand to bless the new facility.

During the blessing, Leibrecht made reference to the garden of Gethsemane.

"There's a lot of Biblical references that tell us we did the right thing here," Kiel said.