Garden in the sky

LITTLE Rosie was just two years old when her heart began to fail and she was rushed to Great Ormond Street and diagnosed with a rare one-in-a-million condition.

Now aged three, she has been given a mechanical heart while she awaits a transplant, and needs round-the-clock care at the world famous children’s hospital. “It’s an intense environment,” says Rosie’s mum Sarah, who gives an emotive account of what it’s like to spend days, weeks and months at your child’s bedside.

Rosie’s story is just one of many heartbreaking accounts you could hear in the corridors of GOSH, and this is why Nick Knowles and his team have planned an ambitious new build to benefit everyone.

“There’s nowhere private to escape from the constant noise, bustle and bright lights of this huge hospital, so that’s where we come in,” says Nick.

The idea is to build a lush, treefilled green space on an ugly unused rooftop that has so far just been gathering grime.

It will be a refuge for the children, some of whom have never been home, as well as their parents who need respite from the wards and the treadmill of treatment.

But it won’t just be any old garden – it’s Chris Beardshaw’s gold awardwinning woodland taken (literally) straight from the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

In true Anneka Rice style, they’ll have just a couple of weeks to transport 30 trees, 1,000 plants and 30 tonnes of soil across London before craning it via 70 individual lifts onto the rooftop two storeys up.

It will take an army of volunteers to finish the task, but all are spurred on by the desire to help children like Rosie. And as we meet staff and patients at this incredible hospital, you’ll be rooting for them all the way.