We’ve dedicated a lot of time in the Fitness and Wellness Department coming up with programs that address the Six Dimensions of Wellness (Physical, Emotional, Social, Spiritual, Vocational, and Intellectual). If you haven’t read the other Fitness and Wellness blog posts, you might want to do that because I talk about the dimensions a lot. I mean, A LOT. It’s an important part of our mission here at Meadowood.

Honestly, we feel pretty good about our programming for our Six Dimensions. We even won a fancy schmancy award—the Beacon Award– for our efforts. So why, then, did we have to go and add a seventh dimension? Are we just being overachievers?

Maybe!

But the Environmental Dimension of Wellness is a bit different than the other dimensions. Defined as “the livability of one’s surroundings,” it’s all about the spaces in which we offer wellness activities. And we happen to believe our spaces are amazing.

Because your overall health is closely tied to the health of your environment, we take great pains at Meadowood to maintain not only beautiful spaces, but ones that promote healthy living. Behind the exceptional landscaping and beautiful indoor fitness and wellness facilities lie a few secrets.

Take our lap pool, for example. The state-of-the-art build includes vents in the gutter system that pull airborne gasses, produced by chlorine and disinfectants, away from the water’s surface. This improves the air quality for our swimmers and our lifeguards, too.

The outdoor fitness patio was thoughtfully constructed with both our residents and the environment in mind. The paving material is rubberized to provide a gentler surface for knees and feet during exercise, and it is also porous to allow rain to soak into the ground beneath. This prevents runoff into overloaded storm drains and local streams.

Our Wellness Garden provides a haven for native plants, birds, and insects, and also for fish and frogs in the man-made streams and pond. An additional pond near the Grove has water plants galore. The herons and egrets love it.

The path around our perimeter road is a paved, smooth surface for walkers and joggers, while the resident-run Woods and Trails Committee maintains a plethora of bird houses, as well as our wooded, natural dirt paths around the campus. Those trails connect with a wider system that branches out into the surrounding area and across Montgomery County.

We’ve also recently revamped all the courtyards around campus, installing seating areas, sculptures, water features, and flower gardens to create peaceful, beautiful places to gather–or just to sit alone in the quiet. The Fitness and Wellness team utilizes these spaces for outdoor exercise and meditation classes, as well as the occasional traveling happy hour.

The grounds staff does a fantastic job of maintaining seasonal plantings as well as permanent flora across the campus, in the courtyards, and indoors.

Meadowood has also offered up our great outdoors to local colleges and universities for research projects, such as one recent study on the spotted lantern fly. The Victory Garden offers a place for residents and staff to plant vegetables and flowers, to use for themselves, or to donate to community food banks.

Everywhere you look here, we are connected to the earth. To life. To health. To the community.

To the environment.

It only makes sense to include it in our wellness mission, don’t you think?

Until we meet…
Donna