Set in a corner of Southampton hospital car park, this new Maggie’s Centre provides free support for anyone living with cancer as well as for their family and friends.
Centre architects, AL_A invited Sarah Price to join their early conceptual discussions. Influenced by AL_A’s visuals of a transparent building set in a wild landscape, Sarah conceived of an enveloping and magical forest garden that would evoke the atmosphere of the New Forest. To achieve this vision almost three quarters of the 1,470m2 urban site was given over to the landscape. Central to the success was the creation of a raised earth embankment along the site perimeter, which was richly planted with trees of varying species, form, and maturity to offer shelter from the adjacent road and car park.
Trees were selected for their beautiful stem colours, toning, or contrasting with the Centre’s ceramic block walls. The strong, earthy pink stems of Betula ‘Red Panda’ and the creamy bark of Betula pendula harmonise with the ceramic white-pink-terracotta. A magnificent, mature Tibetan Cherry with paper-like peeling red bark has a sculptural presence within the sociable, south garden. Crab apples and domestic apple trees are underplanted with meadow-like plantings - a rich offering to wildlife. In time ‘Scot Pines’ - traditionally way-finder trees - will grow to rise higher than the building itself, giving the centre a natural visual landmark within the hospital grounds and locality.
Anyone who has spent time in a hospital environment can appreciate the importance of a garden within a care setting. Whether as a retreat to enter or as a green view glimpsed from a hospital bed. Gilly Howard-Jones, Maggie’s Southampton’s Centre Head has spoken about how the garden has become a place not only of escape and relaxation, but also of recuperation.
It is common for patients to walk around the garden circuit, taking in its sensate qualities while measuring their daily recovery. Some patients are wheeled across from the hospital for picnic visits in the garden with family.
In early spring, the planting is characterised by the emergence of our exotic-looking native pasque flower (Pulsatilla vulgaris), partnered by the distinctive black bead-like heads of the tufted grass, Sesleria heufleriana. As the season progresses taller flowering panicles of Deschampsia and Molinia grasses create an ethereal tapestry through which perennials form colourful, textural harmonies that overlap and shift as you journey around the garden.
Social spaces were given focus by the creation of custom, low-carbon furniture in collaboration with Local Works Studio. LWS designed and fabricated terrazzo tabletops from site-waste, and created comfortable, weather-proof chairs from local decommissioned firehoses.
