Lucia Mueller handed small bunches of mums and Montauk daisies to several residents of the Skilled Nursing Facility at Peconic Bay Medical Center Tuesday, helping a man with a weak hand position a few leafy stems.
“Stick them in like this so it covers this ugly part,” she said, angling a few clippings into a plastic pumpkin.
Mueller, from Aquebogue, is the Riverhead Garden Club’s volunteer in charge of the floral therapy program at the hospital. She visits the unit about eight times per year to make seasonal and holiday floral arrangements with patients staying there.
“A lot of the patients just like being able to create something,” said Kimberly Bernth, the hospital’s director of recreation. She’s been overseeing the program for about a decade, she said.
Mickey Wells has been a resident of the unit for 14 months. She always had a flower and a vegetable garden when she was a younger woman, she said. She’s enjoyed Mueller’s visits since she began participating in the program six months ago.
“Very beneficial. Flowers make you happy,” she said.
The club also tends to the courtyard garden located off the dining room, where Bernth said patients enjoy sitting.
She said some patients who lack the physical ability to participate like to attend just to watch and chat. She walked one of the finished pumpkins to a nearby table where an elderly man sat in a wheelchair.
“He usually keeps to himself,” she said. “When I brought it over he smiled and pointed where I should put it on the table.”
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