Health Your
Ambitious Caring Together
News from Rotherham’s hospital and community health services
After captivating visitors at the world-renowned RHS Chelsea Flower Show next year, one of the show’s 13 flagship gardens will find a new home in Rotherham. Each year, RHS Chelsea Flower Show invites visitors to experience the very best in landscape design, highlighting gardens that champion good causes, spotlight charities, and showcase gardening themes. Next year, the Asthma + Lung UK Breathing Space garden will compete for the show’s sought after trophies. Thanks to funding from Project Giving Back, the garden will then make its way to Rotherham’s Breathing Space. It will then become a permanent therapeutic space for patients and staff of The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust’s community location.
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August - October 2019 Isssue 2 December 2025
Rotherham set to bloom with prestige after next year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show This serene, restorative garden is designed for people living with lung conditions and will feature accessible paths, therapeutic planting, and a floating platform for breath-focused practices. This calm, supportive space will incorporate innovative sustainable materials including a new carbon-capture concrete technology. The Asthma + Lung UK Breathing Space Garden has been designed by Angus Thompson and will be constructed by Dan Flyn mentoring a local (Rotherham) team, and is sponsored by Project Giving Back – a grant-making scheme giving charitable organisations the chance to apply for a fullyfunded garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Angus said, “The design was inspired by speaking to the Asthma + Lung UK community and patients at Breathing Space Rotherham about what they wanted from a garden. We hope the garden will help foster a greater understanding of the mental and physical
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benefits of access to green space, particularly for those with breathing difficulties.
“At the heart of the woodland-edged garden, a ‘breathing space platform’ will be a place for mindful movement and therapeutic activity, where visitors can breathe in the scent of pines, and exhale beside softly moving water.” “Thanks to Project Giving Back, the garden will have a lasting legacy at Breathing Space in Rotherham. We’re honoured to develop the design with patients, staff and the local community and we look forward to next year’s Chelsea.” Bob Kirton, Managing Director at The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, said, “We’re really excited to be bringing this to our town next year, working in partnership with Asthma + Lung UK and the talented garden designers.
“Breathing Space is all about creating a calm, supportive environment for people with respiratory conditions. Bringing a Chelsea Flower Show garden here is a fantastic opportunity to enhance that vision and produce a truly uplifting space for our patients and community.” Sarah Sleet, Chief Executive at Asthma + Lung UK, said “We’d like visitors to be inspired to think about their own breathing, and take a moment to exhale during their busy day and experience a moment of calm. We also want to highlight the invisible impact of breathlessness for the one in five people in the UK who will develop a lung condition in their lifetime, and for people to be more aware of Asthma and Lung UK’s vision of a world where everyone has healthy lungs.”
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JANUARY 2019 ISSUE 1 Page 1