How the transformative power of gardens is helping spinal injury patients through lockdown – Telegraph.co.uk

When Britain became officially housebound last month, Graeme Stones life was already in lockdown.

Last autumn he suffered an epidural abscess leaving him paralysed from the neck down; since December hes been rehabilitating in the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, 70 miles from his home in Essex. But when his ward closed to visitors, staff numbers dropped, and he had to begin social distancing from the other patients, his previously frenetic life as a fruit importer took on a new level of isolation.

Horatio's Garden was the only comfort, he explained. Id have my lunch out there in my power chair. Suddenly we had to do all our physio and gym work outside thankfully the weather was like being in California.

Without the daffodils, bluebells and sweet shop array of tulips in the garden, Stone said being separated from his family would have been much harder to cope with. The garden, which opened 18 months ago, was funded in part by the 2015/16 Daily Telegraph Charity Appeal, in which readers donated 280,000, and was designed by RHS Gold medal winner and BBC Gardeners World presenter, Joe Swift. Immediately it became the social hub of the unit, a place where patients couldbreathe the fresh air, read the paper in the sunshine and enjoy coffee and cake in the garden caf.

I watched the garden evolving through the seasons as I recovered; Id sit in the caf and chat to my relatives, Stone said. It was the last place I saw my dad smile before he died of cancer; I couldnt make his funeral last month, so I sat out in the garden and played a few of his favourite records.

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How the transformative power of gardens is helping spinal injury patients through lockdown - Telegraph.co.uk