Members of the community and employees of Royal Darwin Hospital and other institutions that operate on the RDH campus.
The Project emerged during COVID19 pandamic to support hospital staff to take outdoor nature breaks to promote their wellbeing and longevity in the health workforce. This period coincided with growing awareness of the high rates of burnout in hospital employees and the interlinked crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.
Between 2021 and 2024, volunteers established 17 campus planting zones along Burnett, Nightingale and Hippocrates Roads. We targeted common pedestrian movement corridors, building entrances and gathering places while avoiding sites where underground services were located. These thriving greenspaces cool the hospital campus, increase local biodiversity and allow staff, patients and visitors to access the known wellbeing benefits of human-nature interaction.
Top End hospital leads the green revolutions in health care
The RDH campus is a heavily built environment set adjacent the Casuarina Coastal Reserve and the Binybara (Lee Point) biodiversity corridor, which is home to over 270 of Australia’s 850 native bird species. During a series of working bees, volunteers planted over 1200 trees, shrubs and ground covers in 157 local indigenous species.
The project’s biodiversity corridor creates “stepping stones” across the built environment, drawing local fauna from nature reserves into previously isolated hospital greenspaces where people move and gather. Around twenty native bird species can now be sighted along the hospital’s biodiversity corridor. These new greenspaces are a source of habitat and food for numerous animals, while human campus-goers can seek respite from the hardship of receiving and delivering hospital-based care through frequent, everyday encounters with diverse flora and fauna.
The new tree canopies lower the local surface temperature by around 30°C, which encourages staff, patients and visitors to take outdoor nature breaks while minimising heat exposure. We selected plant species in consultation with senior Larrakia Elders Dr Aunty Bilawara and Roque Lee. Their expertise as ethnobotanists and Traditional Healers helped the Project to emphasise species of Indigenous cultural significance, particularly those associated with traditional healing and ceremony. This approach aims to improve the hospital experience for Indigenous patients who are over-represented in Australian hospitals.
