Designs For All Seasons Hospice Garden

Designer Selina Botham has recreated the spirit of her winning design of last year’s RHS ‘People Choice’ Best Large Show Garden at Hampton Court Flower Show to create a space specifically with bereaved families in mind. The garden will open in September 2015, and the intention is to provide a comforting, beautiful and calming outdoor space for families as they mourn the loss of a child.

After the brief was received from the hospice, Selina was struck by the similarities with the wildlife show garden, designed for Jordans Cereals, which showed how a garden could be created which was both good for nature and at the same time beautiful and relaxing for people to use.

“There is something deeply comforting about walking along curved paths and through soft planting. When I saw the hospice site and heard what was required, I immediately thought of that sense of a ‘hug’, which the right garden design can give.”

In the hospice garden Selina has included curving paths of grey sandstone sets which will lead round the garden and curving blocks of planting to enclose and create a hug as you experience the garden. The feeling is one of safety but also openness so that there is space to breath too. Gentle layers of planting surround you as you take time to sit or walk around and touch, smell and see the plants and wildlife they attract. The new garden reuses a water feature that the hospice already owned, now relocated in the centre and adapted to create a relaxing sound of water,