In the autumn and winter of 2020 we built a garden at Harefield Hospital.  The ‘Harefield Healing Garden’ provides sanctuary and immersion in nature; a natural and accessible place away from the wards, a place for patients to meet with family and friends, a place for relatives to while away time during those fraught hours waiting for a loved one in theatre, for outpatients to spend time whilst waiting for appointments, and for staff to take a well-earned break.

This garden is funded entirely by the generosity of people like you. Any amount, no matter how great or small, helps to ensure that The Healing Garden will always be there for those who need it.

We need to raise £40,000 every year to cover the cost of professional help, tools, materials, plants, and insurance to keep the garden in top condition.

Can you help, please?

Rosie & Catherine Co-Founders

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Our personal reasons for building a garden

Rosie Pope OBE, Founder

My son Will received a new heart in 2013 when he was 20. He spent many weeks at Harefield when first diagnosed, at 16 years old, with dilated cardiomyopathy, and more than 6 months there aged 20. He had a VAD (Ventricular Assist Device) implanted in 2009 but was back at Harefield on the urgent transplant list four years later.

We saw Harefield all year round. In Spring, Summer and Autumn, when possible, Will would sit on a bench overlooking the road. In winter the nurses pushed him from ITU to the front doors of the hospital to see and feel the snow.

Will suffered from ITU syndrome and took many months to recover after his transplant. On a cold crisp day in February, as he was too weak to get into a car, I bumped him along the uneven pavement to the Old Orchard, in a borrowed wheelchair supported by pillows, pulling him backwards over the paving stones. For the first time in months he was outside, and part of the world again. He didn’t look back. That’s when the idea of a Healing Garden for Harefield began.

Catherine Perry,
Co-Founder

My dad spent 12 days at Harefield following a sudden an unexpected heart attack on his regular morning run. He was airlifted to Harefield and spent most of those 12 days in an induced coma, before sadly passing away. My experience with Dad at Harefield, really opened my eyes to the incredible job health professionals do every day (and night!) so relentlessly, and it made me want to give something back.

My children would have loved to have visited their grandad, had he recovered; a garden would have provided a much nicer setting for this, away from the wards. Mum and I would have benefitted from having access to a garden to just sit and reflect; as would the staff, who were visibly affected by the loss of their patient.

These are my reasons for volunteering to create the Healing Garden; a garden that can help heal people, in many different ways, for decades and even generations to come.

Rosie has held the healing garden in her heart ever since her son Will was in hospital, and I was honoured to be invited to come on board to help to bring her dream into fruition.

Patients with access to nature:

√ Suffer fewer complications after surgery

√ Use less pain medication

√ Experience more positive feelings and fewer negative emotions

√ Patients with a garden view are discharged sooner than those who looked out on an inanimate brick wall

Roger Ulrich “Effects of Gardens on Health Outcomes”