Garden
of Healing

The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Vail Garden

The Vail Garden landscape design elevates the “healing hospitality” concept of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation’s Sydell & Arnold Miller Family Pavilion, also designed by NBBJ.

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The landscaping is a contemporary expression of the basic elements found in formal gardens: a groundcover bed, reflecting pool, hedge, flowerbed, garden wall and sculpture — here a dramatic, LED-illuminated glass wall.

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Located at the entrance of the Miller Pavilion, the Vail Garden brings the landscape indoors and transitions people graciously into the world of the clinic.

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Floodlights behind the hedge dramatically illuminate the adjacent historic facade and green wall, which become a backdrop to the composition.

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Conceptually, the Vail Garden's illuminated glass wall extends underground, into the color-changing pedestrian passage between the parking garage and clinic.

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A collaboration between NBBJ’s lighting and landscape architecture studios, the Vail Garden elevates the “healing hospitality” design concept of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation’s Sydell & Arnold Miller Family Pavilion.

The Vail Garden, named for Cleveland philanthropists Tom and Iris Vail, is located at the entrance of the Miller Pavilion to bring the landscape indoors and transition people graciously into the world of the clinic. The garden features a cast-glass sculpture wall by Joel Berman Glass, illuminated on both sides by two rows of color-changing LED fixtures concealed within it. Conceptually, it is an aboveground extension of the underground passage, whose glass walls are also backlit by color-changing LEDs, between the parking garage and clinic.

The landscaping is a contemporary expression of the basic elements found in fine gardens: a groundcover bed, reflecting pool, hedge, flowerbed, sculpture, and garden wall. At night, the wall’s effect is heightened by reflections in the pool at the wall’s base and by floodlights behind the hedge that dramatically illuminate the adjacent historic facade, which becomes a backdrop that ties together the careful composition.