The Masonic Charitable Foundation is donating a £10,000 grant to a new therapeutic gardens project at Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield, which will see two gardens at the hospital’s Highlands Wing transformed.
In all £120,000 is needed for the project’s successful completion – around £110,000 has already been raised. The appeal began in late 2015.
The first of the two new gardens is a dementia care garden, which will harness colour, scent, and visual stimulation, to evoke memories, recreating a ‘post-war’ residential street, complete with period shopfronts, Victorian street lamps, and a genuine 1960s Mini car (see photo), that will be familiar to the majority of patients.
The second garden is aimed at recovering stroke patients. Based on a Japanese design, it will provide a tranquil haven for patients for whom the noise of a busy ward can be overwhelming, as well as a quiet place for family and friends to visit. The gardens are accessible from the dementia care and stroke rehabilitation wards, and will be used by over 200 patients every year, and ‘hundreds more visiting family and friends’.
The photo shows (left to right) Trevor Koschalka of London Freemasons, Alison Kira, head of Project Development at the Royal Free Charity, Chris Burghes, CEO, Royal Free Charity, and Chris Valiantis, landscape architect, Tectonic.