The Stroke Association’s Garden for Recovery to launch at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024

The Stroke Association will present its first ever show garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in May 2024, created to support stroke survivors to achieve their best possible recovery.

Sponsored by Project Giving Back, the grant-giving charity that funds gardens for good causes at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the Stroke Association’s Garden for Recovery is designed by critically acclaimed landscape designer Miria Harris, herself a stroke survivor.

The garden has been shaped by Miria’s experience of stroke and the stories of other stroke survivors, as a space to support and inspire stroke recovery, both physically and mentally. The garden mirrors the Stroke Association’s purpose, to support every stroke survivor to achieve their best possible recovery.

After being displayed at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show from 21-25 May 2024, the garden will be reconfigured and moved to its permanent location adjacent to the stroke unit at Chapel Allerton Hospital, Leeds, where it will provide a place for connection and rest for stroke survivors and their families.

The Stroke Association’s Garden for Recovery will be a 10 x 22m Main Avenue show garden, and will be Miria Harris’s first time designing at RHS Chelsea.

The garden will be welcoming and accessible, designed as a peaceful, sensory space for recovery. Colour, scent and the sound of water will provide soft way-finding for those with additional visual or mobility needs, while interconnected pathways through a contoured landscape acknowledge the difficult road to recovery with its ups and downs.

Stroke strikes in an instant, and the effects last a lifetime, it is the biggest cause of complex adult disability in the UK, but recovery is possible. It can strike anyone at any time and in England, one in six people will have a stroke in their lifetime.

Designer Miria survived a stroke in 2019, which left her with aphasia, affecting her ability to speak and form words properly.

Miria says: “I didn’t know what was happening and thought I was losing my mind. My voice came back to me relatively quickly, but the stroke led to a discovery that I had a hole in my heart and in 2020 I had heart surgery to close the hole. Carrying the emotional trauma of both these events will always be with me. It is definitely not as simple as just getting better. There are many bumps in the road and recovery is not linear. After the disconnecting experience of stroke, the reconnection with people I love and with nature has been hugely important.

“My story and the stories that I have learned from speaking to other survivors have been the inspiration for this garden. They have shaped the garden’s themes and have directly influenced the material choices I have made in the design.

“Project Giving Back has enabled me to combine my passion for designing gardens and landscapes with the opportunity to help raise the profile of the Stroke Association and the work they do, a charity that as a stroke survivor myself, is very personal to me.”

The Stroke Association is the leading stroke support charity in the UK. From providing vital stroke support services, to funding pioneering stroke research, the Stroke Association relies on fundraising in order to support stroke survivors to achieve their best possible recovery. Currently, the Stroke Association can only reach one third of the survivors who most need the charity’s help.

Juliet Bouverie OBE, Chief Executive of the Stroke Association, said: “Through personalised, coordinated and empowering stroke support, the Stroke Association helps survivors and their loved ones to achieve their best possible recovery. We provide support that covers every aspect of a survivor’s recovery, so they are not just living to survive, but able to live life again.

“We are thrilled to have the honour of presenting a show garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024: it will be the most extraordinary occasion for the Stroke Association. Our presence at the show will help us to achieve our ambitious new goal; to reach everyone with stroke support as quickly as possible after their stroke, while also creating a beautiful, lasting legacy which will support stroke survivors throughout their recovery for many years to come.”

Craige Richardson, Director of Estates and Facilities, at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “It’s wonderful that the Stroke Association’s Garden for Recovery will be relocated to its permanent location at the stroke unit at Chapel Allerton Hospital, part of Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, where it will provide a place for connection and rest for stroke survivors and their families. Not only will it increase the biodiversity of the landscape, it will provide our recovering stroke patients with direct access to nature and the positive impact on well-being that comes with it.”

More about the garden

A wildlife pond and stream will add the soothing sound of water, with a bridge across the stream as a metaphor for the mental, physical and emotional connections that have to be rebuilt after stroke. Gently curved accessible paths will lead visitors around the garden, while a series of natural built walls shape places to rest and be with loved ones.

A focal point of the garden will be trees rescued from a forgotten nursery field. The trees challenge what the ‘perfect’ specimen should look like, with gently twisted branches that are emblematic of the stroke recovery process not being straight forward. As well as creating a visual impact, the pines have been chosen for the transportive nature of their scent, which is the direct opposite of the clinical smell of hospitals.

The garden will feature loose muted rainbow colour blocked zones, using shrubs, perennials and annuals to help visitors find focus without cluttering the space. The central area of the garden will provide a place to rest and reflect, with seating created by emerging furniture designer Olivia Gonsalves.

The Stroke Association’s Garden for Recovery will be displayed at RHS Chelsea Flower Show from RHS Chelsea Flower Show from 21-25 May 2024.

For more information about the Stroke Association and the Stroke Association’s Garden for Recovery, visit www.stroke.org.uk/garden