Horatio’s
Garden, Musgrave Park Hospital

The garden is designed to provide outdoor spaces for socialising and interactive activities that patients with acute spinal injuries would otherwise not be able to undertake. The multi-disciplinary team included award winning garden designer Andy Sturgeon Design and the space is located within a courtyard at Musgrave Park Hospital. It includes aesthetic and functional planting areas which can be maintained by the patients as part of their therapies. The garden is operated by the Horatio’s Garden charity alongside volunteer staff. The scheme is one of a number of other similar projects that the charity have commissioned around the United Kingdom.

Paths weave through the planted areas to create routes for patients to travel around with gradients and surface type selected to assist with ease of movement. Resin bound aggregate surfacing is carried through into the interior of the garden pods and larger garden room which are areas intended for one-on-one or group gatherings of families or patients and staff. The larger garden room is fitted out with an accessible kitchen area and surrounding seating space to allow the users to have a place to connect away from the clinical environment of the hospital wards. Materials have been chosen to work together within the heavily planted external environment and provide a welcoming and warm environment within the wider hospital complex.