If you ever doubted the power of flowers

A rare Saturday newsletter but I could not resist bringing you a little hope and a little joy. I didn’t know, and I don’t think I could have known, but I think our wonderful garden just might have saved a life. 

These words were spoken by Robin Hanbury-Tenison in an interview on Radio 4:

RHT: The remarkable thing is, they kept me in this condition [an induced coma] for all this time and I very nearly dropped out a lot of times during it. But the big breakthrough moment was when they wheeled me down into this wonderful new thing they’ve got which is an intensive care garden, where you are in the open air with flowers. It sounds silly but it is really extraordinary, and my moment when I came through was when I was wheeled out into this garden, the sun was on my face, I had all these tubes and things and four people pushing this big bed with everything leading from it, and with the sun on my face, suddenly, I came out of it. 

Was the thinking that it was psychologically good, or that there were clinical, practical benefits to being outside?

RHT: Obviously both, but there is a huge amount of psychological matter in this. I think everywhere should have secret gardens in their hospitals. Derriford in Plymouth is the first. It’s just magic, because getting you out in the open air and the sun in your face, and suddenly, I came out. After seven weeks, I was suddenly back with it.

The question the interviewer asked brought me up short a bit. As a psychologist working in safeguarding, I have no doubt that there have been children that I have protected from great great harm, whose lives are better and safer because of me. I never thought that I would affect the course of an adult life through flowers. It was as if magically, all the different bits of me that I usually keep apart, came together. And it felt absolutely right and a privilege. I also got my photo in the guardian, but that is not the point. 

There have been so many articles written, but I think my favourite might be the account written by Merlin, Robyn Hanbury-Tenison’s son, in the Spectator. 

‘As an 83-year-old with an extremely bad reaction to Covid-19 his chances of getting this far have been vanishingly slim. At one point he had multiple organ failure, a fever and needed a tracheotomy and dialysis to survive. The doctors have been amazed by his resilience and determination to pull through this ordeal and to survive. Derriford Hospital has a ‘secret garden’ for ICU patients that people can be taken to when they are extremely ill. My father was wheeled there while bedridden and we were able to watch through an iPad screen as he felt the sun on his face and breathed unfiltered air for the first time in over a month. The change in him was palpable and I believe it was the beginning of his road to recovery and health.’

I could not and did not do this alone, and this was only possible because of the generosity of Yeo Valley, and the work of Tom Massey. Those plants that are now flowering their hearts out in the middle of that incredible hospital were grown by Hortus Loci and driven down by Mark (remember when we could drive places?). 

We really did start something. Tom, Yeo Valley and Hortus Loci have gone on to donate plants to five London hospitals, including St George’s Tooting, where it just so happens I was born. 

Of course, if we are perfectly honest, I did not save any lives. However much I might have helped, the real work was done by the doctors, nurses, support staff and rehab teams at Derriford. My favourite amongst these people is Kate Tantam, the driving force behind the garden, and the person I am inexpressibly proud to call my sister-in-law. This is her. (Kneeling.) I wasn’t insensitive enough to ask her to move the people to one side so I could see the flowers…