Veteran journalist and environmentalist Bill Kurtis paid a visit to Elmhurst Aug. 18 to lunch on Tallgrass beef from his Kansas ranch at 100 South Chop House and Grill and discuss healing gardens and the holistic approach to health with those associated with Elmhurst Memorial Hospital.

I learned from hospital Trustee Joel Herter that the new version of Elmhurst Memorial Hospital will be one of the first hospitals in the nation to be built using the principles of Planetree, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping transform the hospital into a life-enhancing, healing environment. Because Kurtis was involved with the creation of healing gardens at Swedish Covenant Hospital, he was pleased to be invited to Elmhurst to share ideas.

The lunch was hosted by the hospital and Kurtis’ long time friend, Lee Daniels, for a small group including Mayor Tom Marcucci and Alderman Norm Leader representing the city and many associated with the hospital, including President Leo Fronza, Vice President of Development Sandra Nelson, Joel Herter, Bob Soukup, and Frank Catalano Jr. Other guests were Dick Portillo, Jeff Budgell, Tom and Kathy Rivera, Dayle Gillett, Heidi Huizenga, Laura Anderson and Cortney Ryan.

Kurtis is a firm believer in the therapeutic benefits of beauty and nature, of gardening and gardens, and takes a hands on approach.

“This idea of therapeutic healing,” he explained, “runs the gamut from Shirley MacLaine’s belief in crystals to the approach of many psychiatrists who believe in the importance of nature and beauty as it relates to health.”

The new hospital is on 55 acres and will incorporate beautiful garden views from each of its 300 private rooms. In fact, many of these gardens will be directly outside patients’ windows with direct access to them. In addition, there will be a one-acre roof garden for patients’ use, which can be enjoyed from patients’ windows.

After our lunch, Fronza took us on a computer-generated reality tour of the future hospital and explained the vision.

“We rethought every step of the patient experience, asking ‘How can we do this better?’ We knew if we focused on the patient, everything would follow. The core belief of Planetree is that family and friends must be partners in the healing process, so every effort is being made to reflect this approach.”

“The Midwest was almost all prairie at one time,” Kurtis said. “The prairies are made up of sturdy plants which could survive the conditions of the times, including the bison which trampled them, the fires caused either by lightning or Indians and which burned them back, and the droughts. The plants that survived were suited to their environment, and the Indians learned to use these plants and believed that beauty turns the spirit to self healing. To create healing gardens with native prairie plants will result in something beautiful that will renew the patients experiencing it.”

Kurtis takes this same approach with his ongoing efforts to make grass-fed beef a popular alternative to corn-fed beef.

He explained it this way: “At the beginning of the 20th century, three things changed the way we raise cattle: liquid nitrogen fertilizer, the development of hybrid corn, and the Depression era subsidies to farmers, which were supposed to end after the Depression but never did. The corn crop increased so dramatically that it was fed to cattle. To further increase beef yield while cutting costs, cattle were pumped with hormones and concentrated in small areas while they ate corn and were fattened for market; however, being in such close quarters exposed them to infection, so they were given antibiotics. In fact, 70 percent of the antibiotics in the U.S. go to cattle, resulting in e coli outbreaks and bacteria resistant to these antibiotics.”

Kurtis raises his Tallgrass cattle the old way, where they wander over wide expanses of prairie, eat grass and are not injected with hormones or antibiotics. It has been an ongoing effort involving much research, but the result is a healthier product. Kurtis further commented that some people with psychiatric problems do much better when fed all natural beef rather than beef pumped with hormones.

Tallgrass, though lean, is also very, very delicious. Eighteen people sitting happily around a table and gobbling away could attest to that, and because it now is a permanent addition to the menu at 100 South, others can enjoy it as well.

Send comments or ideas to elmhurstovereasy@comcast.net.