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Boone Hospital is the latest facility to unveil an outdoor space called a healing garden. The area between two wings of the hospital includes picnic tables, benches, and a rock waterfall.

It's a place for patients, visitors and employees to find respite from the stress of hospital treatment. The healing garden often books musicians to play during the lunch hour.

"If you can go outside and take a deep breath and de-stress a little, it gives you a different perspective," said Bard Danuser, Executive Director of the Boone Hospital Foundation. The foundation raised $220,000 in private donations for the garden.

There is a similar but smaller healing garden at the Goldschmidt Cancer Center in Jefferson City.  Ellis Fischel Cancer Center will build one in the new hospital which is under construction and the new St. Mary's Health Center will have a healing garden as well.