CED Stone Group supports Horatio’s Garden, Stoke Mandeville

Post date: 01 Oct, 2018

The 9^th September 2018 saw the completion and opening of a very special garden. Horatio’s Garden at The National Spine Injuries Centre in Stoke Mandevillel. Horatio’s Garden is a charitable organisation that creates beautiful accessible gardens in NHS spinal injury centres across the UK. The charity is named after Horatio Chapple who volunteered at the Duke of Cornwall Spinal Treatment Centre Salisbury. He came up with the idea of creating a garden there for patients and visitors to use, and carried out research by drawing up a questionnaire to obtain patient’s views on what they would like to have in the garden. Tragically, Horatio died at the young age of 17 while on an expedition to Svalbard when his camp was attacked by a polar bear. Donations flooded in and the charity in his namesake, was established in 2012, and the first garden opened

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We were first contacted back in January 2017 with regards to sponsoring the charity’s third garden at Stoke Mandeville. It was clear from the outset that this was a project CED Stone Group wanted to support. Designing this Horatio’s Garden was celebrated garden designer and journalist Joe Swift. Joe was invited to our West Thurrock Depot to view the showroom and discuss his design needs, he brought along his drawings and explained his vision for the garden at Stoke Mandeville. Several different products were discussed and in the end Joe had decided traditional British Yorkstone and TIER Panel walling were the perfect product for the garden.

Two-tone Buff Grey Yorkstone would be used to produce the coping stones and the special engraved bench end. These were produced from templates made on site that were then sent to the quarry production team.

CAD drawings of the Buff Yorkstone Rill were supplied and tweaked before also being sent for production at the quarry. Our TIER Panel System would be used to clad the garden walls, Rustic Granite was chosen to complement the Yorkstone Paving .

As requested by Joe, our West Thurrock Depot arranged for a few Buff Yorkstone blocks to be brought into the Depot for him to view. Two of the blocks were selected and Steve Shayshutt our Production Supervisor worked his sandblasting magic transforming them into beautiful bespoke Yorkstone birdbaths. Approximately eight tonnes of boulders were also supplied and can be found scattered throughout the garden in flower beds and on the pathways for seating.

We are very happy to have been invited to be part of this project and are extremely proud to have been a sponsor. This beautiful garden, we know, will benefit patients and visitors for many years to come.

You can read more about this fantastic charity and the work they do here.