Gardens and Health Beneficiaries

Gardens & Health beneficiaries

In 2021, the National Garden Scheme donated £235,000 of the total £3.03million in charitable donations to gardens and health-related projects run by charities including Horatio’s Garden and Maggie’s.

Horatio's Garden

Horatio’s Garden creates and cares for beautiful accessible gardens in NHS spinal injury centres.

Horatio’s Garden is one of the National Garden Scheme’s gardens and health charities – receiving funding for work which promotes the physical and mental health benefits of gardens and gardening. The National Garden Scheme has been supporting Horatio’s Garden since 2015 and have donated £400,000 to-date to help the charity create and care for beautiful accessible gardens in NHS regional spinal injury centres. In spring 2019, the National Garden Scheme committed funding for the completion of all eleven gardens across the country and in 2021 donated a further £75,000.

Our commitment to Horatio’s Garden

Horatio's garden volunteer working on the garden

With support from the National Garden Scheme, three more gardens have opened to patients in Buckinghamshire, Shropshire and London. The garden at the National Spinal Injuries Centre, Stoke Mandeville was opened in September 2018 and was designed by BBC Gardeners’ World presenter and RHS Gold Medal Winner, Joe Swift.

In September 2019, the charity’s fourth garden, Horatio’s Garden Midlands, opened at the Midland Centre for Spinal Injuries in Oswestry. It has been designed by well-known Gardeners’ Question Time panelist Bunny Guinness.

The fifth Horatio’s Garden has been designed by internationally renowned, Tom Stuart-Smith, who has a total of eight Chelsea Flower Show gold medals to his name.  Works began in January 2020 and were completed in September 2020. The garden is at The London Spinal Cord Injury Centre, located at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore.

Maggie's

Maggie’s offer the best possible support free to anyone with cancer and their families who walk through their doors.

For each centre, architects and interior and landscape designers work closely together to ensure a strong connection between the outside and inside space.

In 2021 the National Garden Scheme made a donation of £100,000 towards Maggie’s gardens.

Creating welcoming spaces

Having already broken ground at the Maggie’s centre in Southampton the charity was determined to push forward with the project in 2020 despite knowing they would be faced with inevitable delays during the worst of lockdown. This meant that the National Garden Scheme donation to help build the centre’s garden was a top priority.

Maggie’s Southampton aimed to open for visitors in November, with the garden still requiring some finishing touches at that time. Once complete Maggie’s expects to support 20,000 visits a year from people needing tailored emotional, practical and social support in the Southampton area.

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