Life and Health

In 2024, Grande Ronde Hospital and Clinics will open a state-of-the-art facility for the communities we serve. We are excited to offer our patients a healing space with plenty of room for privacy and a tranquil view across the valley floor from the new location of our Surgical Services Department.

The Great Plant Rescue of 2022

While we are in the process of turning architectural renderings into reality, there has been—and will continue to be—some short-term pain over the next two years. This is to be expected with a construction project of this magnitude. One of the first things that had to go early on this past summer was our beautifully landscaped and award-winning hillside that has defined our campus for some time.

Over the years, and under the care of many groundskeepers and gardeners, the GRH landscape and grounds team has planted and nurtured thousands of trees, shrubs and flowers here on the hill. We have designed and installed water features while creating walkways and gathering spaces to showcase it all in a serene and healing outdoor environment for our employees and visitors.

In 2013, the Community Landscape and Forestry Commission honored GRH with the Landscape and Community Forest Beautification Award. We were chosen for the "harmony, beauty and creativity in landscape design" as well as our "integration of colors and textures of plant materials and hardscape accents." Over the years, that iconic landscaping bordering our campus and anchoring our facilities has become part of us.

Now in 2022, we're undertaking the largest construction and facilities expansion project since we relocated here in the 1960s. This facilities expansion project is larger than the third-floor addition of our Family Birthing Center in 1992; the North Wing addition in 1997; the 7,000-square-foot upper parking lot annex built in 2000; and the 2003 Emergency Department and lobby expansion—combined. If you consider that the current Hospital is 135,000 square feet, this 98,000-square-foot construction is a staggering addition of much-needed space on our landlocked location.

Several options for the location on campus were considered, but the best plan all the experts agreed upon was the east-facing ground. So, last summer, construction crews began digging out that award-winning hillside to make way for the new addition that will anchor our campus from that same slope.

As excited as we all are about the new build, thinking about the trees, shrubs and plants having to come out was bittersweet. Facilities Director Elaine La Rochelle and her team came up with creative ways to salvage what we could. Last June, before the construction began in earnest, Elaine had the great idea to offer up the plantings to employees to dig up, take home and share the landscape legacy of GRH.

She put out a call to employees with a location map for all the plantings that had to be removed. Inviting them to take part in the Great Plant Rescue of 2022, Elaine explained that construction of the new building meant that "our beautiful landscaping will be sacrificed."

More than 75 employees came that Saturday morning to remove hundreds and hundreds of plants and give them a new home. They brought buckets and shovels, taking pickup loads home to nurture and enjoy—a gratifying solution to a bittersweet situation.

Included on the map and marked for removal was a special group of plantings that first came from Elaine's mother's home and were originally transplanted here in 2008 by a previous groundskeeper.

"So this will live to bloom another day," Elaine says, pointing out a beautiful purple clematis that was on several employees' wish lists to take home.

New landscape for future enjoyment

GRH Project Engineer Joel Donivan, whose focus over the next two years will be this facilities expansion project, has plans to save some of the wood from the beautiful maple trees that had to be professionally removed. The wood will be kilned, planed and incorporated in some decorative way into the new facility or a new outdoor space. We honor the past here, but we always look to the future.

While we are forever changing the face of our campus, we remain committed to creating a beautiful new landscape for everyone—patients, visitors and our employees—to enjoy. New water features, new plantings and more will be incorporated into the outdoor design. We are particularly excited about a new outdoor dining space (more to come on that down the road) that will benefit from the healing natural environment we will recreate for all of Union County to enjoy for decades to come.

Categories: Future of health care