It is the ultimate transplant. A garden created for the Chelsea Flower Show lifted and transported to Barrow-in-Furness.
One of the legacies of the annual, famous Royal Horticultural Society show in recent years is that charities benefit for the high profile, creative show gardens on display. The many hours that go into creating and presenting them – and indeed the hard landscaping, sculptures, structures, plants and trees – do not go to waste and instead many are moved to new locations after the five-day show is over.
Project Giving Back is an organisation that funds gardens for good causes built at Chelsea then relocates them to benefit charities across the UK.
One of the gardens in 2022, created for the charity Mind and designed by multi award-winning designer Andy Sturgeon, was moved to the Mind in Furness centre at Barrow where it was adapted for a derelict piece of land next to the centre in School Street.
The relocation involved transporting ten fully grown silver birch trees, a series of sculptural walls and oak curved benches, along with a wide selection of the plants from the garden. Wincanton transported the garden to Barrow free of charge, supported by Dunelm.
Some of the other plants from the Chelsea garden were also donated to a 11 more Mind centres across England. All the plants in The Mind Garden were grown and cared for by award-winning UK nursery, Crocus, which also built the garden at Chelsea.
The Barrow garden is now flourishing and bringing mental health benefits to the local community and the people who use the centre and are inspired to connect in nature.
For Andy, an eight-time RHS Chelsea Flower Show gold medal winner, gardens have been a refuge during difficult periods in his own life. The Mind Garden he created is a place where others can connect, share experiences and find comfort together.
His inspiration, during one of the COVID-19 lockdowns, was to build a garden that is “dramatic, yet tranquil and beautiful”.
He said: “One of the key things about mental health is that people haven’t historically spoken about it. so, the whole point of this is to make people talk about their mental health, other people’s mental health, and make it more an acceptable thing to discuss. So, although this is a garden design which functions well in its own right, it is also very much about conversations which can be so important for mental health.”
In the original garden a series of sculptural, rough textured walls cascaded and swirled through the sloping garden, at times enclosing peaceful seating areas, framing views and creating backdrops to generous drifts of planting. The pattern then became more turbulent with walls coming together to form narrow passages before spreading out into wider open spaces.
The tactile walls were rendered with sand, lime and shells, supporting an overriding biophilic design ethos that brings people up close to nature.
Andy added: “The walls themselves can be seen to represent different aspects of mental health. the spaces between them are protected and enclosed in the centre. In other spaces it’s more chaotic and there’s turmoil. And some of the spaces and the junctions between the walls are actually quite uncomfortable. But then as you move down through the garden, you look over the top of them, they spread out, they become quite calm and quite serene.”
At Barrow, the silver birch trees give a sense of woodland with swathes of colourful perennial meadow planting, while benches, by sculptor Johnny Woodford, carved from wind-blown oak provide places for contemplation and conversation.
Under the shade of the trees, grasses and plants such as Auralia and ferns create a lush green area. Towards the front of the garden the meadow plants are more sun-loving with bright coloured perennials in among a matrix of grasses.
With the garden adapted to fit in Barrow, Andy added: “We hope it will help people have a conversation in green, serene surroundings for many years to come.”
Project Giving Back (PGB) was set up to help create gardens for good causes and is funded by two anonymous philanthropists. All the gardens funded by PGB are relocated after Chelsea so they can continue to benefit the charity. By 2026, the organisation will have 60 gardens over five years.
The Andy Sturgeon garden was one of the first and, having chosen Mind as his charity to support, Mind worked with its regional centres to find a suitable location for the garden.
The plants used in the original Mind Garden were:
Tree – Betula pendula
Wildlife hedge – Acer campestre, Amelanchier lamarckii, Aronia melanocarpa, Cornus mas, Corylus avellana, Crataegus monogyna, Euonymus europaeus 'Red Cascade' and Viburnum opulus
Shade – Adiantum pedatum L., Aralia cordata, Beesia calthifolia, Blechnum penna marina, Blechnum spicant, Briza media, Carex divulsa, Chloranthus sessifolius ‘Domino’, Deschampsia cespitosa 'Goldtau', Dicentra 'Filigree', Disporum longistylum 'Green Giant', Disporum 'Night Heron', Dryopteris cycadina, Dryopteris wallichiana, Epimedium wushanense, Gallium odoratum, Ligusticum scoticum, Maianthemum oleraceum, Maianthemum paniculatum, Maianthemum racemosum, Osmunda regalis, Polystichum setiferum, Saruma henryi, Smyrnium perfoliatum and Vancouveria hexandra
Dappled shade/sun – Amsonia tabernaemontana 'Storm Cloud', Angelica dahurica, Asparagus meiocladus, Camassia lechtlinii 'Silk River', Cenolophium denudatum, Filipendula multijuga var. yezoiensis, Geum rivale, Melanoselinum decipiens, Polemonium 'Lambrook Mauve', Rodgersia aesculifolia, Thalictrum 'Elin', Thalictrum rochebrunianum, Valeriana alliariifolia, Valeriana officinalis, Visnaga daucoides, Visnaga daucoides 'Casablanca' and Visnaga daucoides 'Green Mist'
Meadow – Acaena microphylla, Achillea 'Taygetea', Allium nigrum, Anchusa azurea 'Dropmore', Bupleurum longifolium subsp. Aureum, Campanula patula, Catananche caerulea, Centaurea montana 'Jordy', Centranthus ruber var. coccineus, Echium amoenum 'Red Feathers', Eschscholzia californica 'Ivory Castle', Euphorbia palustris, Euphorbia walliichi, Gladiolus communis subsp byzantinus, Helianthus salicifolius, Leucanthemum vulgare, Papaver somniferum 'Laurens Grape', Pulsatilla vulgaris 'Alba', Rosa glauca, Salvia sclarea, Seseli elatum subsp. Osseum, Sesleria autumnalis, Stipa gigantea and Zizia aurea.
Glenn’s story – The Mind Garden
Glenn Mahaffy is a peer support worker at Mind in Furness, in Barrow, who cares for the garden and tells an uplifting story about how it is helping him and others, bringing a sense of pride to the area. Glenn struggled with depression and knows gardens and outdoor space are key to his recovery.
“My first experience of Mind was 20 years ago. I was suffering from anxiety and depression, and I was in a very bad place. I found myself outside Mind in Furness, but it took me until the third occasion to actually step through the door and ask for help.
My job was in the NHS as an activity coordinator in a psychiatric unit, where I got to see the importance of creativity and nature, and learned a lot about occupational therapy. But another breakdown ended my career with the NHS, so five years ago I came back to Mind in Furness and became a volunteer. One of the first things I did was I started a garden of three raised beds.
This piece of land was a derelict church, which was burned to the ground and demolished ten years ago. We got the opportunity to take over the brownfield site from the council and we were trying to do something with the land for several years.
When our CEO, Karen Dobson, first told me about the opportunity to bring the Chelsea garden here, I thought it was pie in the sky – that wouldn’t happen here and to us. I have lived in Barrow-in-Furness all of my life, and having a Chelsea garden in the back streets of Barrow is quite something for our town.
I’m very proud to have this garden here and very proud that my team planted it with the guidance of Andy Sturgeon; that was a really empowering experience. Two asylum seekers from Eritrea helped us with the planting so the garden is giving opportunities to people from all walks of life.
The garden is used regularly – I open it up every morning and it is accessible to all. People working locally use it to eat their lunch. We've had mindfulness sessions, therapeutic gardening groups, conversation groups, and events such as a Halloween party for the local community. It has been great that we can get outdoors and use it as a wellbeing opportunity.
We are natural creatures who aren’t supposed to be stuck indoors all the time – gardens give benefits on many levels. The trees are wonderful. I do a lot of work in conservation in the Lake District and so bringing trees into this space feels like bringing some of the countryside in. The curved oak benches offer somewhere just to sit and breathe, which is something that I do and it helps me.
We get nothing but praise from people in the area and the wider community. It’s an industrial town and this is a rundown and deprived neighbourhood, so it’s amazing to see a garden in the centre of that. People appreciate it and the sense of wellbeing it brings.
The garden really highlights what we do here at Mind in Furness and is an accessible way for those who are seeking help to come to us. I’ve learned the powerful role that nature plays in recovery and now we’ve got a whole programme focused on ecotherapy not just in the garden, but I also run conservation trips to the Lake District and visits to forests. We are trying to offer things at different levels so that everybody can get something out of it and I’ve got great hopes for the future.
My bosses sometimes remind me of what I’m achieving – that I’m making a real impact on people’s lives and that means so much to me because I’ve been through tough times myself. I understand the depths of what they are experiencing. We help people recover every single day – we take people at their very lowest and help them towards recovery. It’s very special to have this garden, which itself has been recovered from a brownfield site, and use it to help nurture others.”
