St Ann’s Hospice Sensory Garden

Aim

We need to refit our patient and family courtyard so people can be outside for much needed rest and sun, it's currently tired and shabby.

We have an urgent requirement to overhaul our patient and family courtyard here at our main Heald Green hospice site. Patients and their families sit outside in this area, central to the hospice, so it really needs to be a place of tranquillity and calm to enable people to get some much needed rest, and when it comes, some sunshine!

Currently the courtyard is looking tired, shabby and overgrown. It would benefit from a full renovation with the inclusion of some new comfortable and durable furniture plus some sensory plants with colour and scents to enhance well-being and relaxation.

Sensory gardens are proven to be a great source of enlightenment. Somewhere that patients and their loved ones can find time to reflect, addressing their psychological, spiritual and social needs.

We find patients derive real calm and serenity from having access to an open safe environment where they’re able to sit with their families in a beautiful, peaceful and calming area.

St Ann’s Hospice provides specialist care to people affected by any life-limiting illness. We care for people with cancer but also people with other illnesses including organ failure, respiratory failure, dementia and motor neurone disease.

We provide a free service to patients, carers and their loved ones from three sites in Greater Manchester, and a range of outreach services, supporting patients in the local community and their own homes. 

Our multidisciplinary team of nurses, doctors and other clinical specialists help to manage patient’s symptoms and care for their medical needs. Our spiritual and psychological team are also here to support patients and families in lots of different ways including financial and legal matters, housing and care needs and the emotional aspects of living with a life-limiting illness.

We have an army of more than 700 volunteers who support us in so many ways – from running our coffee shop and providing visitors with a much-needed cup of tea, to tending to the hospice gardens, working in our charity shops or supporting staff on our wards.

Our volunteer gardeners are on standby to help with the planting and the ongoing maintenance of the gardens once the transformation is complete. We also have local corporate groups willing to come into the hospice to help with the work.

This project successfully funded on 27th November 2018