©2004/5 Eugenia Uhl

What the Tour Benefits and
Why It Was Started

A brain injury can be deadly, but surprisingly most of us know someone who has survived one.  Anyone can sustain a brain injury, no demographic group is spared. However, some groups are most prone.  The very young and the elderly sustain head injuries most often in falls while young men sustain brain injuries in automobile accidents—which account for 20% of all traumatic brain injuries in the US.  Alarmingly, many suffer head injuries from sports activities including accidents on bikes which are one of the most common ways to sustain a brain injury.  In 2007, 64,993 individuals sustained a traumatic brain injury from cycling, making this sport the most brain injury prone.
 
The war in Iraq and Afghanistan has contributed to higher numbers of brain injuries thus; soldiers are another group greatly affected by brain injuries. Veteran advocates report 150,000 to 300,000 soldiers return home to the US from Iraq and Afghanistan with some form of a traumatic brain injury. Thanks to improvements in medical technology and techniques (many of which have been tested in the battlefield,) vets are surviving catastrophic injuries which would have killed them ten years ago.

When a person sustains a brain injury, he or she and the family enter unchartered waters of recovery.  While numerous life-saving techniques for brain injury survivors have improved, many of the rehabilitation methods are often hit or miss. Brain injury rehabilitation is still uncertain and evolving which sometimes forces the brain-injury survivor and his or her family to determine the best course for rehabilitation.

Recovery can mean a lot of different things. A brain injury is not an event or an outcome but is the beginning of a lifelong disease process that impacts brain and body functions resulting in difficulties in physical, communication, cognitive, emotional, and psychological performance that undermines health, function, community integration and productive living. Brain injury is also disease causative and disease accelerative in that it predisposes individuals to re-injury and the onset of other conditions. Brain injury impacts neurologic disorders such as epilepsy, vision and hearing impairments, psychiatric disorders, and orthopedic, gastrointestinal, urologic, sexual, neuroendocrine, cardiovascular and musculoskeletal dysfunction.

Once a brain injury patient has recuperated beyond the critical stage, rehabilitation needs vary as to what is available to the survivor and his or her family. Because the location of the brain injury and the severity of the injury vary, no one method is necessarily suitable for all survivors.

The internet is a powerful information tool but it is difficult to find local information on brain injury recovery. This lack of resources coupled with the dramatic effects of a brain injury, such as the inability to walk, to talk, to drive, or invisible effects such as memory loss and behavioral changes can make brain injury recovery one of the most expensive, frustrating and bewildering processes. Devising the right recovery plan is extremely overwhelming for both brain injury survivors and their families.

In 2003, Eileen Gambel and Kathleen Waring realized the need to raise funds for brain injury recovery after attending local brain injury support group meetings. They learned how many of the members were left with devastating deficits: physical, mental, financial and emotional. These same members were forced to create their own personalized brain injury recovery plans on top of their daily duties.

The two decided to put on a garden tour as fundraiser adopting the concept of the healing properties of a garden from The Secret Garden book. It made sense to establish a fundraising tour of lovely and secret gardens as a means of helping others to heal from brain injury.  Along with Marianne Mumford, a friend and landscape architect, Eileen’s husband, Gene, and friend Glenda Barkate, they decided to schedule a garden tour in Uptown New Orleans since it was an area with many beautiful gardens which were not often seen.

This original group recruited friends and volunteers to help raise money and put together a local resource guide on brain injury recovery.  The money would also help fund, The Acquired Brain Injury Survivor Support Group’s social events for birthday and holiday celebrations.

The original garden tours took place in March of 2004 and 2005.  Over 1500 participants from New Orleans and beyond came to see the outstanding 18 garden layout in 2005. Word of mouth has established the tour as one of the best outdoor garden events in New Orleans highlighting the talent of local garden designers who showcase a variety of  gardens styles varying from the traditional and formal gardens (maintained by many professionals) to the avant garde incorporating tromp l’oeuil techniques in smaller venues. 

The tour was postponed for four years and made its debut again in March 2009 garnering local and regional visitors and posting $40,000 in funds to put towards brain injury recovery needs.

About the Tour and What Makes It Unique

The Secret Gardens Tour® differentiates itself from other home and garden tours in several ways. First, not only do visitors to the gardens receive a detailed description of each garden in the program, but the tour also includes garden designers in each garden, who are likely to be the expert who designed and/or maintains the gardens. If you have questions about the design and structure of the garden or the viability of the plant material and conditions in which it grows, you’ll have someone who can knowledgeably answer your questions!

 Second, The Secret Gardens Tour® unveils one of the most picturesque areas of New Orleans—a private neighborhood beloved for its architecture and variety of its gardens but also an area not often revealed to the public…a secret New Orleans. New Orleans is known for its music, its food, its architecture and its history but its gardens are also a year round glory.

The tour was postponed after Hurricane Katrina, but with the help of hundreds of volunteers, The Secret Gardens Tour® will once again provide locals and visitors to New Orleans another reason to experience New Orleans while benefiting individuals and their families who are recovering from brain injury. Funds raised in 2009 will go towards revising, printing and distributing The Greater New Orleans Resource Guide to Brain Injury Recovery as well as to support survivors of brain injury and their recovery needs.