2025-03-16 – News – www.theguardian.com
Trusts work with the Royal Horticultural Society to create outdoor refuges for staff and patients
For Hayleigh Austin-Richards, it is a place to have a cry, breathe fresh air and remind herself there is something magical about butterflies. As often as she can, the ward manager of Chapel Allerton’s stroke rehabilitation unit in Leeds visits the hospital’s “Garden for Recovery”, originally created for the Chelsea Flower Show and installed last summer.
Austin-Richards’s job can be hectic and tough, and she sees people going through some of the worst moments of their lives. The garden is a refuge: “It’s quiet. The way it’s designed, it brings you in and shelters you in it. You feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere,” she said.
