4 minute read
Alder Hey in the Park
Typology: Mental health | Location: Liverpool
Alder Hey exterior. © Paul Raftery
A new landscape ties together a healthcare campus for children’s mental health
The new Community Cluster at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool is an integration of the new Catkin Centre and Sunflower House buildings with the associated landscape, The project required close collaboration between architects Cullinan Studio and landscape architects Turkington Martin.
The challenge was to meet the aspirations of the Alder Hey Trust to create a world-class open space for health and wellbeing, which befits the name of the hospital, Alder Hey in the Park. Shaped by extensive local consultation, the project provides an inclusive landscape amenity for hospital staff and visitors as well as the wider community of East Liverpool.
The Catkin Centre looks out onto neighbouring Springfield Park and provides a new home for outpatient services including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), development paediatrics, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), eating disorders, and crisis care. It offers engagement space, quiet rooms, consulting rooms, family therapy rooms, an art and music therapy room, offices, and meeting space. Next door, Sunflower House is a home-from-home for young people with complex and enduring mental health conditions, comprising a 12-bed inpatient facility for children aged 5–13 with the most challenging mental health conditions.
The approach to the landscape design is predicated on the widely recognised benefits to mental health and physical wellbeing that visual and physical contact with nature can bring. Opportunities for contact with planting are maximised so that visitors are able to both see and become immersed within a lush green environment. The concept of an intensely planted landscape has informed the approach to the design of all the external spaces.
We recognised that, for many people, their arrival at the car park would be their first Alder Hey experience, and so it needed to be light, welcoming and uplifting. A planted pedestrian route rises along the change in level from the car park to the entrance and is embraced by a combination of perennials, shrubs, trees and wildflowers. The central garden is framed by a cloister, ensuring everyone can visually connect with nature as they pass between waiting areas and patient rooms. Planting is raised to seat height and windows often push out into the courtyard to maximise the visual connection between interior and garden. Within the garden there are both quiet, contemplative areas and more open spaces in which to meet and socialise, with views out over the park. Furniture is a combination of moveable pieces to allow flexibility and choice, together with fixed seating integrated with planted edges. Flowers and foliage colours are intentionally concentrated in different parts of the garden to evoke different moods, from the calming effects of blues, whites and purples, to potentially more stimulating reds, oranges and yellows.
The approach to the landscape design is predicated on the widely recognised benefits to mental health and physical wellbeing that visual and physical contact with nature can bring.
The garden at Sunflower House creates a calm retreat for residents, conceived as a sensory garden and social space, and animated by the presence of water. A variety of seating spaces are carved into raised planting areas, offering opportunities for small groups to gather or for individuals to find time to reflect alone. The planting has a strong sensory appeal that combines the graceful movement and sounds of ornamental grasses with the evocative scent of herbs, such as mint, thyme and rosemary. Textured leaves and strong colour further enhance the experience. Elsewhere within this planted structure are areas where patients and families can become involved in growing plants themselves, together with more open spaces for play. The gardens are now maintained by the Green Volunteers, a group set up by the Trust to look after their new healthcare landscape.
Mike Martin CMLI is a landscape architect and Director at Turkington Martin
Roddy Langmuir is an architect and Practice Leader at Cullinan Studio
