Designed by garden designer Dave Green, with biodiversity and resilience to climate change at its core, the Wellbeing Garden joins two others that have been created in the county: sheltered housing community centre CHP Parkside and Colchester Wellbeing Hospital Garden.
Creating connections
The third Wellbeing Garden is located at Halstead Hospital, which is a small hospital with health care services including cardiology, diabetic medicine, and X-ray imaging. It has a mix of in-patient and respite beds, as well as running outpatient services.
Depending on their need, some patients will be able to use the garden as part of their treatment. There are plans to offer patients social prescribing, which is an approach that connects people to activities, groups and services in their community to meet the practical, social and emotional needs that affect their health and wellbeing.
The new Wellbeing Garden will be maintained by a mix of volunteers, some from Provide, a care provider that runs two wards at the hospital, and from friends of the hospital, as well as staff and local residents.
The garden has raised beds for accessibility, seating for staff to sit look at the view into the valley, and wheelchair and frame accessible paths. As Essex is the driest county in the UK, the garden will include drought-tolerant planting.
Dr Alan Symington, Chairman Halstead Hospital League of Friends, says:
“The garden will add to Halstead Hospital’s therapeutic and rehabilitation role. As well as being a restful place it will allow patients to reconnect with nature and get their hands dirty through planting and growing. It will also give staff a quiet place in their rest period.”
The RHS Community Outreach team are delivering a seasonal activity programme covering a full growing year, to ensure NHS staff and volunteers have the skills, knowledge, and confidence to maintain the planting and raise awareness of the importance of biodiversity.
The Halstead Wellbeing Garden is one of six gardens being built around England in collaboration with the NHS Property Services. Service users have been involved with the designs to ensure the gardens address each site’s individual needs.
Funded by NHS Property Services’ Corporate Social Responsibility department, the gardens aim to improve the biodiversity of community-based centres, while also creating outdoor spaces suitable for green social prescribing and other therapeutic treatment. This programme is funded separately from funding used for frontline care.
Visit our funding pages to find out how you can contribute to future NHS wellbeing gardens.
