| HEALTH CARE
Working in different care settings has taught me how essential connection with nature is to our journeys of healing.
Health care commissions include Churchill Hospital, Guys and St Thomas’ Cancer Hospital and Maggie’s Oxford.
Maggie’s Oxford
“YOUR APPROACH RESPECTS THE SPIRIT, EDCOLOGY AND CULTURE OF THE PLACE AND CELEBRATES THE ROLE OF PLANTS IN OUR LIVES” Maggies Oxford
For Maggie’s Oxford, I had the honor of collaborating with Wilkinson Eyre Architects to create the landscape around the treehouse centre beside Churchill Hospital. The site is a narrow strip of land along Boundary Brook, looking out across Warneford Meadow—a gift long ago offered to the people of Oxford as a place of recuperation and inspiration.
Faced with dramatic level changes and the presence of a magnificent circle of mature trees, the architects lifted the building onto stilts creating a treehouse that made space for nature while opening long, restorative views. The heart of this project lies in this liminality: a threshold space between the dense fabric of the hospital and the open breathing room of the meadow.
I spent time with the brook and the land—listening, drawing, and attuning to its existing character. What emerged was the need for a resilient shrub layer and woodland understorey. Native plants that could stabilize the soil, weave into the wider woodland, and offer an ever-changing abundance for people and wildlife alike. These included hazel coppices, a bank of wild dog roses and an abundance of native ferns.
Just as the impact of Maggie’s Centres ripple into the community, this planting was imagined as a seedbed that could help restore the wider woodland setting over time. Above all, the design became a meditation on our place within a greater scheme of life and the cycles that flow within us and throughout the living world.
