26 May 2009
Battersea care home unveils award-winning Chelsea garden in own backyard
The magic of the Chelsea Flower Show has been trans-‘planted’ to Battersea, with the residents of a Bupa nursing home now the proud owners of a multi-award winning garden from last year’s show. The Bupa Garden, which won a Royal Horticultural Society gold medal and the 2008 RHS / BBC People’s Choice Award, has been officially unveiled at Bupa’s Meadbank Nursing Centre after an extraordinary journey that has taken it from the gardens of SW3 to SW11.
In a feat of logistics, the garden was moved in its entirety across the river, with cranes and trucks employed to move, among all the trees and plants, a giant four-tonne, eight-foot high ‘boule’ sculpture which had to be craned over the care home. Created as a dementia-friendly sensory garden by the award-winning TV gardener Cleve West, the ‘recycled’ oasis of green and calm, has found its perfect home. Bupa’s Meadbank Nursing Centre cares for residents with dementia and in addition to marking the opening of the garden – the care home unveiled a new unit for residents in the early stages of the condition.
Cleve West, award-winning garden designer, said: "This is a little bit of Chelsea that will be forever Battersea. Its fantastic that a garden that won so much at last year's Flower Show has been transplanted to a new environment where it an be appreciated by the residents, their families and their carers. As a sanctuary and a place to stimulate all the senses - it’s the perfect legacy."
Michalae Thompson, home manager at Bupa's Meadbank Nursing Centre, said: "This oasis of a garden has already made a massive impact on all of us, especially our residents with dementia. When I walk around the, trees, the plants, the giant sculptured ball, I have to pinch myself that we have an actual gold medal winning Chelsea Flower Show garden growing here at Meadbank."
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