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This children’s hospice is surrounded by large grounds, including a large pond and a wildflower meadow. However, certain areas – the tranquil garden and the sensory beds outside the windows to the children’s rooms – needed
improvement.
The tranquil garden was designed and built some years ago and had become tired, with too much vegetation over the paths and pond and the wood work tatty and unkempt. The brief was to lift and regenerate it.
The sensory garden consisted of raised wooden beds with overgrown vegetation and little of any interest in them. They were placed on grass and were therefore not accessible to children in beds or wheelchairs. The brief was to pave the area around the beds, spruce up the timber frames, clear then replant with sensory plants.
In both cases it was agreed that we should use students from the Welsh College of Horticulture at Mold as part of their landscape course to design and do the work. Despite difficulties of fitting in with timetables good designs were produced and the work was executed.
The tranquil garden had vegetation removed, the pergola fencing painted, new planting installed and the paths repaired, creating again a pleasant area for bereaved families to sit. The sensory garden was designed with plants ranging in colour right through the rainbow from one end to the other. The paving was undertaken by the maintenance man and volunteers.
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