Horatio’s garden

Horatio’s Garden By Camilla Hiley (Weatherby, 1981) A sanctuary of healing and hope

I have been designing domestic gardens for more than ten years now, and projects vary enormously. If you are lucky, a project comes along that is very special. My involvement with the first ‘Horatio’s Garden’ at The Duke of Cornwall Spinal Centre in Salisbury was one such project.

This garden was the brainchild of teenager Horatio Chapple. His father is a consultant spinal surgeon at the Unit, and Horatio was hoping to follow both his parents into Medicine. He realised the need for an outdoor space for the patients to visit whilst rehabilitating at the Centre. Sadly, Horatio was killed in a tragic accident in 2011.

As a local garden designer, I was asked to advise the spinal surgeons, NHS staff and Horatio’s family on how to realise his vision.

Building on an NHS site is very different to building a domestic garden and is fraught with complexities, from logistics to the make-up of the site. The first thing was

to identify the quality of the garden that was to be built, that would do justice to Horatio’s legacy, and then how, once it was built, it could be maintained for years to come. We realised that a well-known designer needed to be appointed to give the garden and the fundraising the best opportunity for publicity moving forward.

Cleve West, a well-known name in the garden design world having won many awards, including ‘Best in Show’ at Chelsea Flower Show, was chosen to design the garden. He proved a perfect choice, as unbeknown to everyone, he had first-hand knowledge of what it was like to have a spinal injury having had a friend in the Centre fourteen years previously, when the only place to get some fresh air was the car park.

I was asked to be Project Monitor, liaising with Cleve and the landscaping team, sourcing materials and plants, as well as reporting back to the family, the Board of Trustees and the NHS on budget and © Clive Nichols progress. We were working on a concept that had not been tested before but knew that it would make a huge difference to the patients’ recovery.

This has been the most rewarding project to have been involved with and, when I see how many patients have benefitted from Horatio’s vision, I am truly proud to have been part of it.

Left: A patient at Salisbury benefitting from the garden environment. Above left: Some of the volunteers who worked on the project. Above: Camilla (far left) at the summer party held as a thank you to those who helped.

The garden opened in September 2012, and has gone on to receive many industry awards, as well as recently being voted ‘Nation’s Favourite Garden for the South West region’.

There are now four Horatio’s Gardens, each with a head gardener: Salisbury, Glasgow, Stoke Mandeville and Oswestry. A fifth is due to open in Stanmore later this year and fundraising for a garden in Cardiff commenced in 2019. The intention is to have a garden in all eleven spinal units in the UK. None of this is possible without the dedication of the volunteers who give their time tirelessly to fundraising, baking cakes, gardening, helping patients with hand therapy – such as planting seeds and bulbs – which are sold to raise money to provide funds to facilitate patient activities and maintain the garden.

This has been the most rewarding project to have been involved with and, when I see how many patients have benefitted from Horatio’s vision, I am truly proud to have been part of it. R

www.camillahileygardens.co.uk www.horatiosgarden.org.uk