Horatio’s Garden Cardiff will be at the new Welsh Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Centre, the specialist NHS centre serving Mid and South-Wales. This will be the sixth garden for the award winning high-profile national charity, Horatio’s Garden. This brilliant charity nurtures beautiful gardens in NHS spinal injury centres to support everyone affected by spinal injury. The gardens become an integral part of people’s lives throughout their time in hospital.
The Welsh landscape formed the inspiration behind these new designs. Circular openings within the perimeter fencing frame field views, hedgerows, veteran trees and in the far distance the sea. This local landscape is echoed in a series of 'interior' garden rooms, created by a framing pergola structure. The different scale rooms are characterised by diverse planting that utilizes the irregularity of the site and its distinct conditions; woodland copses, shady moss edges or open, immersive meadow-like plantings.
Each garden room evokes a different sensate experience, colourful, aromatic, quiet, breezy, dappled, rain, dew or sunset.
Designed by 6a architects, the pavilion uses sustainably sourced timber and is designed to resonate with Welsh rural buildings and to feel like ‘home’. The pavilion’s roof canopy is extended to provide covered external areas, so patients, visitors and NHS staff may spend time outside throughout the seasons.
The entire garden will be easily and safely accessible to patients in beds or wheelchairs and in dark evenings garden lighting will give a magical environment to be seen from the wards.
Visuals drawn in collaboration with 6a architects
