People with spinal injuries need gardens like these. At Horatio's Garden we know that people with spinal injuries need natural beauty to support their recovery. This is why we build and look after extraordinary gardens in the heart of NHS spinal injury centres.
4,700 people have a spinal injury every year, which can happen to anyone at any time. The results are life-changing and devastating. You are transferred to one of 11 NHS spinal injury centres across the UK, often far from home. You have little privacy or control and rehabilitation can take up to a year.
We know how critical it is to have an incredible garden right outside your hospital ward. We build and look after extraordinary, hardworking gardens with garden rooms to support this time. The gardens offer a vital place for reflection and adjustment, privacy and solace, joy and companionship. Our head gardeners offer gardening workshops to grow and cultivate plants and we organise a programme of events. Our evidence shows the gardens support better sleep, vitamin D levels, improved relationships, mental health, distraction from pain and reduce stress.
We have now opened gardens in eight of the 11 NHS spinal injury centres in the UK. Our vision is for everyone with a spinal injury to have a Horatio's Garden as part of their rehabilitation care.
Exceptional Gardens
The charity’s projects are all designed by different acclaimed landscape designers who create the outstanding gardens following detailed consultation with all stakeholders and are situated immediately adjacent to the spinal injury centres.
The calm, inspiring places showcase the best of contemporary planting design using carefully-chosen trees and plants to be enjoyed from different vantages and through all seasons. Smooth paths enable safe movement around the garden for patients in hospital beds and wheelchairs.
The designers collaborate with prominent architects to create bright interior spaces with for all-year-round appreciation of the gardens whatever the weather.
Every Horatio’s Garden has a team led by a Head Gardener, supported by a garden administrator and a dedicated team of volunteers who work together to nurture the gardens, with regular advisory visits from the garden designers.
“This is what healing gardens should be like”
– Society of Garden Designers
Life in Horatio’s Garden
Immersion in Nature
|Garden therapy
|Arts programme
|Families and Friends
Patient, relatives and staff all use the gardens to enjoy the immersive benefits of nature. The sounds, smells and sights of the natural environment are a direct contrast to the wards.
What is a Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)?
The spinal cord is a thick bundle of nerves. It carries messages from the brain to the rest of the body to enable us move, feel and control vital functions like breathing, blood pressure and bladder and bowel activity. When the spinal cord is damaged, this communication is disrupted, resulting in a loss of movement and sensation from below the level of injury. In addition, there may be loss of voluntary control over bladder, bowel and sexual function.
Damage to the spinal cord can be caused by a trauma from an accident, or as a result of infection, a medical condition or disease and can affect anyone at any age.
Alongside the physical impact of a spinal cord injury, there are also immense emotional and psychological effects on the patient and their loved ones. SCI has devastating consequences for both their lifestyle (Duggan and Dijkers, 2001; Post and Leeuwn, 2012) and physical health (Krause et al, 2019).
People with spinal cord injuries are 56% more likely than the general population (Migliorini et al, 2008) to experience mental health issues and can have a four- to five-fold increased risk of suicide (De Vivo et al, 1991). Evidence shows that increasing patients’ sense of control after their SCI reduces depression for up to two years after leaving hospital.
Social support has also been shown to improve physical and mental health of people with SCI. Having communal and peer-led support networks improves psychological outcomes (Kely 2016).
Horatio’s Garden aims to use the evidence base to improve all aspects of physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing for patients with SCI and their friends and family.