Now that Autumn is here and winter approaches, the Growing Spaces in the garden at Gartnavel Royal Hospital have started to take on new colours and shapes. Seed heads and falling leaves carpet the walkways and yet the Sunflowers still offer a striking reminder of the summer now gone.

Fiona Sinclair, Volunteer Services Manager, Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) for the hospital said: “What a wonderful summer we had this year. We had a range of events taking place in the garden leading up to our Garden Open Day on Sunday, 29 August, where we welcomed visitors as one of the many invited to take part in the Scotland’s National Garden Scheme 2021.”

Camilo Brokaw, the Senior Project Officer of our Third Sector Partner, The Conservation Volunteers (TCV), offered Garden tours to visitors to explain the new techniques for growing and conservation that he has shared with our garden volunteers from ‘Art in the Gart’, our creatives and volunteer programme supporting mental health recovery. These Techniques will reduce the need for external inputs and instead use nature itself to increase yield, improve soil productivity and sustain wildlife. 

Fiona continued: “Raising awareness of the role our Growing Spaces have in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of Gartnavel Royal Hospital’s patients, is why we offer visitors the chance to learn about our garden plans going forward. This in turn supports our efforts to help reduce the ongoing stigma associated with mental illness and encourage new volunteers to join us in the garden bringing new ideas and skills.

“The Open Day also allowed us to launch our Outdoor Mosaic Project which invites patients, staff, volunteers and visitors to become involved in creating a new mosaic to decorate one of the raised beds. Contemporary Mosaic Artist, Sara Melville, encouraged people to participate in the decoration. This activity will be replicated in the Hub Café space of Gartnavel Royal Hospital where patients and staff can become involved.”

The Tranquillity Garden of The Growing Spaces Project hosted the annual “Celebration of Life” on 10 September, International Suicide Prevention Day. Colleagues from Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector (GCVS), Glasgow City HSCP and Glasgow City Council and members of the public attended the garden to reflect and remember. Messages of love and hope were written and suspended alongside the turning leaves of the Rowan tree, first planted for this event in 2013.

Summer was also kind to our programme of outdoor music when musicians from Music in Hospitals and Care and from third sector partner Common Wheel, offered live gigs in the ward garden spaces.

A member of the public wandering around the Walled Garden during the pandemic, Summer of 2020, commented to one of the garden volunteers: “This place has saved my life.”

Another visitor to the Growing Spaces commented to a volunteer: “I’m so grateful to have this close to home. It has allowed me to wave at other people in the distance and know I am not on my own.”

Follow the activity in the gardens on twitter @artinthegart

More information on volunteering from Fiona.Sinclair6@ggc.scot.nhs.uk