The Florence Nightingale Garden

PROFILE

Designer Robert Myers Chelsea history 2007 (Gold), 2008 (Gold), 2013 (Gold)

Plot MA322

Sponsor The Burdett Trust for Nursing

Contractor Bowles & Wyer

Theme A courtyard garden in a modern hospital that embodies the principles of Florence Nightingale

Contact 01223 351400 (Cambridge studio), 01885 227377 (Worcestershire studio), robertmyers-associates.co.uk

Viewed from the front, this garden – which celebrates the nursing profession as well as the legacy of social reformer and founder of modern nursing Florence Nightingale – imagines a patient looking out of a hospital window on to a restful courtyard of gently undulating planting, some in dappled shade under birch trees, some in sun. A striking, contemporary pergola in slatted, cross-laminated timber (CLT), cantilevered to allow uninterrupted views, creates a modern-day cloister where patients and staff can walk or sit. Paths emanate from the cloister and wind through the planting, which emerges from mounded beds, creating an immersive effect. The paths widen at the front and back of the garden, allowing spaces for seating.

In keeping with the garden’s theme, the planting features a number of medicinal plants, including one of Florence Nightingale’s favourites: foxgloves. Here the Digitalis genus is represented by D. ferruginea, some possibly bearing seedheads to show the beauty of autumnal forms. The calming palette of greens and whites is punctuated in the more open beds with reds, purples and pinks. Nightingale stressed the importance of clean water and good sanitation, represented here by a steel-edged pool at the back of the garden. Other reminders of her life are embodied in the boundary/hospital walls, also made from CLT, in the form of extracts from her letters and the silhouettes of some of her pressed flowers, which are laser-printed on the surface. An ethereal image, taken from a photo of her in her garden and displayed on a Perspex window, suggests that she is still inspiring modern-day nursing.