I had an accident at work involving a lift. I’ve been in the National Spinal Injuries Centre in Stoke Mandeville Hospital for nine months, coming on ten, after having major surgery in November. Emotionally, it’s been really difficult. I felt disconnected, and then I came down to Horatio’s Garden and this has been my solace.
To be honest, without the garden, and the one-to-one horticultural therapy sessions with Head Gardener Amy… well, it’s invaluable. I couldn’t have coped with this very extended stay at the ward if I hadn’t had the garden. It would’ve broken me emotionally. I’m a very strong person but I have realized that there is a limit to being strong, and I reached it.
I give the other the patients fresh tomatoes, and the staff. I’m quite proud of this learning, it’s been emotionally calming. There are some people here who can’t get off the ward, but they know who I am – ‘she’s the one planting all the tomatoes!’ They come to put their orders in, so I get them their tomatoes and lettuce, spring onions, cucumber, and it all just makes me feel that I’m useful. We grow it because it’s nutritious, it’s organic, it’s delicious, you can pick it fresh. The patients and nurses really love it, all this fresh food, and I love to help out. It’s very emotionally calming; it’s stabilizing.
I’ll come down to Horatio’s Garden every day. When I don’t come, either Amy or one of the volunteers will pop up because they’re so used to seeing me. It all means that I’m not just a hospital number, as there’s people who know my name. That’s amazing.
The volunteers in the garden are fantastic – they make a big difference, because my family live over a three-hour drive away and I don’t have a lot of my friends nearby, so they’ve become a bit of a surrogate family. I’ve actually introduced a lot of patients to the garden for that reason, and said ‘at the moment, you’re not going to be feeling good, but coming down you really will. The garden really will support you, it really will help you.
You can be so tired, but you make an effort to come down to the garden because you know what’s here, and you know it’s always worth it. You can go down feeling awful, but then you come back up to the ward and you feel totally chilled. You come back thinking, ‘oh that’s been another day spent in the garden,’ which is really nice!
There’s always someone around, always someone there. I was struggling a lot with debilitating pain, then you bump into somebody else and you don’t think about your own pain. You can support one another, and I don’t think you can do that without the garden, because you can become quite isolated on the ward. In the garden, there’s always someone who does care and is interested in how I’m feeling.
I think this stay would’ve broken me, if I hadn’t had the garden. It’s so social, you can go to the garden room, you can make drinks for people. I’m very much a person who likes to help, but I know from being paraplegic and being in a wheelchair to wait until they’ve really had a good go, and then say, ‘Do you want me to give you a hand?’. There are people here who give you the chance. In other places they just assume you’re not capable, so that’s been very nice.
It glued me together, this garden. It’s how you see something change day by day, and that encourages you down here. Emotionally, I do feel like I’m on an emotional rollercoaster. You get told one thing, and then another, then something doesn’t happen, or changes. Here, in the garden, you’re just in nature. It’s lovely seeing the red kites in the garden that fly around. You can also see how you’ve just planted a seed, and it grows. In my mind, I’m thinking, ‘right, tomorrow I’ve got to go down and do this and that,’ so it gives you something that’s not: ‘I’ve got to get washed, go to physio, I’ve got to do this.’ It’s something that’s normal, it becomes life.
We also have things like jazz performances and creative people and musicians coming in. You can turn your back on the ward, and think ‘no, if I just focus on that flower box, I’m just in a lovely garden somewhere.’ It’s beautiful and you don’t need to think about going back to the ward.
Gardening with Head Gardener Amy has really been like a course, an education. I’ve developed new skills which I’m going to take home with me and continue. My husband has already got a list of what I’ll need for growing lots of plants, especially microgreens, which I’d never heard of before! He’s going to try and sort out raised flower beds and so on, so that I can carry on gardening when I’m home. I’m looking forward to that and much more besides.
Horatio’s Garden really, really is therapy. It’s quite emotional because of the relationships you build with other patients, alongside garden therapy and around beautiful flowers. You see that life starts as a seed and then carries on, and I actually see myself in that – the major surgery is a basis for my life to go up and improve. I can’t even put into words what it means. It’s just beautiful.”
