2024 forecast: a big year for the Greenfingers garden builds

As the sun starts shining and the days get longer, the nation is starting to think about their gardens again. One organisation that has had gardens on its mind year-round is the children’s hospice garden charity – Greenfingers.  Here Linda Petrons, Director of Fundraising & Communications at Greenfingers, provides an update on those gardens that are currently underway across the country.

GARDENS OPENING

The Nook – Norfolk

The new garden at The Nook, part of East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices, has been several years in the planning and is just part of a hugely ambitious long-term vision for the hospice’s entire landscape. Officially opened by HRH, The Duchess of Cambridge in 2019, The Nook is East Anglia’s Children Hospice’s (EACH) most recently introduced site, and its masterplan garden design has been created by Gold-medal winning designer, and Greenfingers Patron, Anne-Marie Powell.

The Rest & Reflect Garden is the first garden space to be completed at the hospice, with the official groundbreaking taking place just six months ago by the incredible team at Stewart Landscapes.  This stunning new garden space has been designed to offer tranquil, sensory spaces, with pockets of quiet, private areas where patients and their families can spend quality time together.

The creation of the Rest & Reflect Garden has been made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of the many Greenfingers Charity’s supporters, including Clarins, the Leisure and Outdoor Furniture Association (LOFA), the National Garden Scheme, Evergreen Garden Care, Rose Press Garden, Ann-Marie Powell and many others, who all came together to help bring this garden to life.

The official opening of this special garden will take place in the summer.

Demelza Hospice – Sittingbourne, Kent

25 years ago, Demelza Hospice Care for Children in Sittingbourne, was the site of the first-ever Greenfingers garden. Now, a quarter of a century later, a second garden has been created, using the incredibly skilled designers, Andrew Fisher Tomlin & Dan Bowyer, from the multi-award-winning garden designers, Fisher Tomlin & Bowyer.

Using Andrew and Dan’s vision, it has been the team at Baylis Landscape that have worked hard over the last few months to ensure the garden is accessible for all.  As with all Greenfingers gardens, the new garden at Demelza Hospice provides complete accessibility to ensure that all the patients can access and enjoy the space, which features many wildlife-attracting elements, including a fabulous ‘bug hotel’, kindly donated by Tom Massey from the RHS Chelsea garden he designed for the Entomological Society!

We’re also incredibly grateful to the many supporters and volunteers who have donated products or devoted time to the project, including Clarins UK, Taylors Bulbs, Rolawn, Deco-Pak, Evergreen Garden Care, Tom Massey, The Royal Entomological Society - as well as Millbrook Garden Centres and our hardworking Chairman and Trustees, Sue Allen, Tammy Woodhouse, Richard  Claxton and his wife Cheryl. 

Like The Nook, the official opening date for Demelza’s new garden will be confirmed shortly.

Derian House, Chorley

The Greenfingers garden at Derian House in Chorley, designed by Chris Forshaw, began the transformation in autumn 2022 and now, finally, the official opening is on the horizon. 

Once a tired courtyard, the entire space has been transformed and access has been reinvented to ensure the privacy of those that use the bedrooms overlooking the space.  Tackling this issue has been the key priority of Chris’ design, where a mixture of interactive zones have been designed to link together via a central covered space. Imaginative and subdued lighting and extra seating, which maintains the privacy for bedrooms overlooking the garden, have also been incorporated into the design.