- Over 200 veterans have been to Gardening Leave since it opened in 2007 and over the next five years, Gardening Leave aims to open new projects in walled gardens throughout the UK to bring companionship and reassurance to more veterans, young and not so young.
- Gardening Leave improves the mental and physical wellbeing of veterans through Horticultural Therapy by giving them structure, routine and exercise. The veterans enjoy being with like-minded people, being outside, and having something semi-structured to do in a safe, peaceful environment. Many of the veterans are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- The privacy and security of walled gardens provide an ideal environment for this type of therapy.
- Gardening Leave currently has three sites - Auchincruive near Ayr, Erskine on the Clyde near Glasgow and the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London.
- Gardening Leave is run by a Board of Trustees and the day-to-day management of the Charity is the responsibility of the Chief Executive, Anna Baker Cresswell.
Background
- Anna Baker Cresswell started Gardening Leave on 16th April, 2007. The charity provides Horticultural Therapy to ex-Service personnel from all three Services and the Merchant Navy, in walled gardens.
- She started the Charity in memory of her mother Valerie, a passionate gardener and Nightingale Nurse, who had trained at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London where Florence Nightingale herself trained.
- Anna had a friend who served in the Falklands conflict, who returned a very different person, and this nagged her for years. When her mother died after a long struggle with Parkinson’s Disease, it was time for a change and she approached Combat Stress to see if they thought Horticultural Therapy would work with the military.
- In 2005 she went to Coventry University to do a Professional Development Diploma in Social & Therapeutic Horticulture. The Combat Stress treatment centre at Hollybush House in Ayrshire agreed to send her referrals and she started looking for a walled garden.
- The Scottish Agricultural College at Auchincruive, 15 minutes’ drive from Hollybush, were cutting back on staff and offered Anna a terrace in their Ornamental Garden. Fittingly, this was where they had started and developed the only National Collection of poppies (Papaver Orientale) in Scotland. The Collection had ‘disappeared’ but Gardening Leave has now nearly finished restoring the Collection.
- At the end of Summer 2007 when Anna realised the veterans were enjoying coming to Gardening Leave and the staff at Hollybush House were reinforcing this, she approached the College to see if they could use the Stovehouse, an 84 metre long Victorian greenhouse in the Ornamental Gardens. This would allow the charity not only to continue gardening and but also allow it to expand the scope of its therapeutic activity to include painting and woodwork.
- Horticultural Therapy has been used to great effect to benefit the lives of other client groups such as children with behavioural and learning difficulties and adults with dementia but until Gardening Leave started, it had not been used with the military in the UK.
- Thanks to the generosity of the Pears Foundation, Gardening Leave commissioned Jacqueline Atkinson, Professor of Mental Health Policy at the University of Glasgow to research the benefits of Horticultural Therapy to its client group and her findings confirmed the anecdotal evidence from the veterans who come to Gardening Leave; they like to be together; be outside and have something semi-structured to do in a safe, peaceful environment
