Let’s be honest: yard work is not fun.
It’s tedious. It’s repetitive. You sweat. You pull weeds only to see more next week. You mow, trim, rake, and then do it all over again. The labor isn’t the reward. We do it because we’re after something else: a yard we can enjoy. A space to host friends, watch the kids play, sip coffee in the morning. A space that feels good.
We don’t want to experience our yards as a chore.
We want to experience them as joy.
Now think about the best outdoor places you’ve been—a neighborhood park, a botanical garden, a golf course, maybe a favorite trail. These spaces didn’t just happen. They were shaped with intention. Someone thought about what you would see, where you might pause, and how you would feel while moving through them. Often, they were thinking about your experience long before you even arrived.
When I was an undergrad, I stumbled into a study abroad program led by the landscape architecture department. I’ll admit it—I chose it because it was two weeks long instead of one. But what I got was a deep, surprising education in the emotional power of space. We used the city of Paris as our classroom and traced the legacy of André Le Nôtre, the visionary behind the gardens of Versailles.
Our instructor talked about more than just beauty—they talked about emotional design. About how great spaces don’t just impress you, they invite you in. You don’t feel directed, you feel drawn. You don’t notice the symmetry or the structure. You just feel calm, or awe, or joy.
Great design disappears.
And in its absence, experience is born.
This idea stretches far beyond gardens.
Take healthcare, for example.
Too often, healthcare administration feels like yard work with its endless checklists, processes, fixes. We dig into spreadsheets. We prune workflows. We patch inefficiencies and pull bureaucratic weeds. Important, yes. But inspiring? Rarely.
But what if we approached healthcare like Le Nôtre approached Versailles?
What if we designed for delight, not just duty?
Think of a hospital or health system as a vast garden.
The CEO becomes the master landscape architect crafting a master vision. Senior administrators are the gardeners, executing on the vision by nurturing the system, correcting what’s overgrown. This analogy goes deep … Your data teams? The irrigation system, quiet, essential, working beneath the surface to ensure a thriving ecosystem of interactions from supply chain to human resources to care delivery. Frontline staff?well they are the flowers, of course, they are the big show and who and what patients will most remember and return to. And the patients? They are the guests in our garden, the ones we design for.
When I was in Paris, we learned about a public rose garden where city sanitation workers hand-pruned each bush, and they did this daily! Not just to clear trash, but to pluck fading blooms before anyone could see them. The designer had envisioned only perfect roses in their original design, and the visitors expect only roses in bloom, and so, to honor their promise to uphold the design and to honor the guests, these workers worked diligently at their tasks and held that promise. That labor wasn’t about aesthetics, it was not about looking like you care, it was about delivering on a promise to provide the best experience. The joy of the visitor relied on the discipline of the sanitation worker.
Likewise, when you smooth out a clunky intake form, fix an IT glitch, or redesign a scheduling process, it might feel like yard work. But it can be the thing that helps a frightened patient feel calmer, or gives a clinician five minutes back in their day, or helps a family find clarity when they need it most.
You’re not just fixing things.
You’re creating Versailles.
Yes, it’s repetitive. Yes, it’s work. But it’s not meaningless. Because when healthcare systems work well, when they feel seamless, inviting, humane—it’s because someone behind the scenes was tending the garden.
So don’t focus on the weeds. Focus on the experience you’re cultivating for patients, for providers, for families.
The best gardens and the best healthcare systems share something in common:
They require constant, quiet care.
And when they’re working just right, you don’t notice the effort.
You just feel better.
Geoffrey Silvera, PhD MHA 