Horatio’s Garden Chelsea 2023

Horatio’s Garden Chelsea is a garden layered with meaning and a place of true respite for those affected by traumatic spinal injuries. It embraces the mission of Horatio’s Garden charity to nurture all those learning to live a new life after spinal injury and it is the antithesis of a busy, clinical hospital environment where patients often spend many months on a ward with little privacy following a life-changing, traumatic event.

The garden received a Gold Medal and the coveted Best in Show Award at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2023.  Watch our film of the garden here.

For the first time on Main Avenue, this is an adaptive garden that puts the priorities of all those with different mobility needs at its heart.  It begins life at Chelsea Flower Show, and its longer legacy life is as the eighth Horatio’s Garden in Sheffield where it will transform a car park into a garden eight times the size of the Chelsea garden. The design is influenced by the stories, history and craftsmanship of the Sheffield region, connecting the garden to its permanent home where it will serve thousands of patients, families and NHS staff each year in the second largest spinal injury centre in the UK.

Harris Bugg Studio have spent many months meeting and listening to the whole Horatio’s Garden community of patients, NHS staff and garden teams, to understand the key elements that patients find so vital when spending time in a Horatio’s Garden. The show garden, based on patient-led design, will give visitors to the show a sense of the hope and transformative effect having access to a Horatio’s Garden can have when coming to terms with a devastating spinal injury.