THE Japanese gardening team, who helped create a unique healing garden at Okehampton Community Hospital, have completed their work and are heading back to the Land of the Rising Sun.
The impressive garden features banks of moss to symbolise the green of Dartmoor, and a stream and a winding path which converge to represent the meeting of the East and West Ockment rivers.
The team from Kasai Keien has been led by Yo Kasai, son of the internationally-renowned garden designer Mr Kasai, and includes Sachio Komatsu, Taka Suzuki and Hiro Terui.
Interpreter Hiro said the team was pleased about how the garden had turned out, declaring it to be ?very excellent?.
He said he thought the garden could help people feel better as he believed a healing garden was a ?very good idea?.
Hiro said creating a Japanese garden in England had been a great challenge for each of the gardeners.
He said the toughest part of the job was finding all the right plants and materials.
?Finding the correct moss was a problem. We are thinking every day about where to get the moss,? he said.
The Japanese landscape gardeners arrived in Okehampton last month, and said they had enjoyed working in the town.
Dr Paul Nielson, the driving force behind the new hospital and its healing garden, said: ?It is a great achievement. We have fused East and West.?
He said the gardeners had represented Okehampton and its surroundings in ?symbolic form? with the path as the dry-stone bed of the West Okement, and the East Ockment represented by the small stream running through the garden before the two merged.
Dr Nielson said he was pleased with the way ?elements of Okehampton and Dartmoor? such as a granite trough and small boulders had been carefully combined with Japanese features.
He said the response to the healing garden so far had been extremely positive.
?Patients and staff have all loved it. The feedback already has been tremendous. Some new mums have been out already to just sit in the garden.?
Dr Nielson stressed the healing garden would evolve and would need regular maintenance and watering.
He paid tribute to the many people who had helped make the garden possible.
?It?s a big community effort,? he said, ?local tradesmen have supported us by giving up their time.?
The gardeners? trip has been paid for by the Johrei Society based in London and Kyoto, which promotes the concept of holistic healthcare using a combination of touch therapy, herbalism, therapeutic massage and Western medicine.
The pioneering idea behind the garden is that it should contribute to the good health of the patient with plants, water and sculpture designed to have a calming and tranquil influence on patients, inspiring their inner-health potential.