After she was diagnosed with breast cancer, Topher Delaney, a San Francisco–based artist and landscape designer, made a pact with God. If she survived, she swore she would devote her work to helping others heal. Now, almost a dozen years later, Delaney has created a specialty in the design of healing gardens for hospitals and sanctuaries for residential and business clients. A new book, Ten Landscapes (Rockport, 2001), displays some of Delaney’s residential projects, which, like her institutional work, is as colorful, upbeat, and unorthodox as the artist herself.