A stunning £30,000 prize winning garden has been donated to our colleagues, carers and inpatients at The Harbour to benefit their wellbeing and recovery.
It was opened at a ribbon cutting launch event on Friday by Chief Executive Chris Oliver and Rob Frowen, the Chair of our Service User and Carer Council, and was attended by sponsors, volunteers, colleagues and patients.
The beautiful and fragrant 1804 Garden was designed by 2023 Tatton Flower show best in show winners and garden designers Carolyn Hardern and Jon Jarvis, and headlined at last year’s Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) event, scooping a silver medal.
It’s now been rebuilt and gifted to the Trust to use as a wellbeing garden with some of our patients even helping with the sewing and growing.
One of those was now former inpatient Emma, who said:
“I’m an Occupational Therapist by trade and have bipolar. As a recent inpatient for a few weeks, I went all Charlie Dimmock, and I really enjoyed getting to work on one of the beds which really helped my recovery as I like gardening at home.”
Chief Executive, Chris Oliver said:
“The addition of the garden at the Harbour will prove to be invaluable for our mental health inpatients, their families, carers and our colleagues.
“We all know the role that being outdoors and connecting with nature has on wellbeing – from reducing stress to improving mood and aiding rehabilitation. The garden will strengthen our sense of community, something we are extremely passionate about, by providing a therapeutic environment for social connection for patients and our colleagues alike.
“Our thanks go to Carolyn and Jon for their work on this project and for choosing us to host their design. We’re honoured to welcome it to Lancashire.”
Back in 2022, Jon and Carolyn designed the winning Constructing Minds garden at Tatton, which won the Best in Show title and was themed around mental health and raising awareness of suicide. They donated it to Clatterbridge Hospital on Merseyside.
Designer Carolyn said:
“Myself and Jon with friend Alan are founders of not-for-profit organisation Constructing Minds with Nature, with the aim of providing wellbeing gardens to public organisations, because the connection to nature in reducing stress and anxiety is well documented.
“The design, which we couldn’t do without our donors and sponsors, consists of three large steel planters made by Lux Unique that are three metres across and almost two and-a-half metres long and are filled with perennials.
“The beautiful central pond they donated is three and a half metres in diameter and with a ringed sculpture by Foxes Bench. Our crushed gravel was donated by Breedon Special Aggregates and the slate paving was gifted by Talasey.”
The beautiful garden design has four large, curved benches under Acer trees and more than 500 plants and flowers around the central water feature, which during the rebuild in Blackpool was kindly filled by colleagues and firefighters from Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service.
Jon added:
“The hundreds of perennials have been kindly looked after, watered and nurtured for free by Steve at K&S Nursery who brought them over to the Harbour during the build. We really do hope the patients and NHS workers in Blackpool will enjoy spending time in the relaxing wellbeing garden which they can name themselves.”
In time, the prize-winning garden will be renamed by patients at The Harbour.
