 Garden designer Kate Gould joins forces with horticultural therapy charity
Horticultural therapy charity Gardening Leave, which helps ex-Service personnel, has announced garden designer Kate Gould is to be its first ‘charity champion’.
Award-winning designer Kate, who has won numerous medals at RHS shows including two gold medals and two category wins at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, will help to raise the profile of Gardening Leave in the horticultural world.
Gardening Leave was started by Anna Baker Cresswell in 2007 to provide horticultural therapy to ex-Service personnel, in walled gardens. It has sites at Auchincruive in Ayrshire, Erskine on the Clyde and work has recently begun on its third site at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London.
General Currie, the Lieutenant Governor of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, asked Anna if she would set up a Gardening Leave project at the Royal Hospital to benefit the many veterans who live in and around London. Those attending the site, which will be officially opened early next year, will be referred from Sir Oswald Stoll Foundation, St Mungo’s, Veterans’ Aid and Combat Stress. They will also self-refer.
Gardening Leave improves the mental and physical wellbeing of veterans through horticultural therapy by giving them structure, routine and exercise. The veterans enjoy being with like-minded people, being outside, and having something semi-structured to do in a safe, peaceful environment.
Kate Gould commented “When Gardening Leave first approached me, I was immediately enthralled by the idea and aims of the charity. Gardening has such great therapeutic potential, especially for those scarred by military experience and I applaud the vision and determination of Anna Baker Cresswell in getting such an ambitious undertaking off the ground. I am also, of course, honoured to have been invited to be the charity’s first gardening champion.”
Anna said “I am delighted that Kate has decided to become our Champion, as gardening is such a wonderful medium through which we can convey Gardening Leave’s message of how to deal with the combat stress reactions and adjustment difficulties, which so many of our country’s ex-Service personnel face in their lives. Kate’s knowledge of plants and people will be absolutely invaluable to Gardening Leave as we get bigger and will enable us to reach more people who may not know what we do.”
Anna’s aim is to expand Gardening Leave to other sites in the UK, so that more ex-Service personnel can benefit from what the pilot project provides.
She started the charity in 2007 with a pilot project in Auchincruive in Ayrshire. There veterans have been restoring Scotland’s only National Collection of poppies as well as growing veg for the nearby Combat Stress treatment centre where many of the referrals come from. They have also been repairing the Stovehouse, an 84 metre long Victorian greenhouse in the Ornamental Gardens at Auchincruive where Gardening Leave is based, so they can paint, do woodwork and more gardening in the long, dark winter months.
Visit: http://www.gardeningleave.org/
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