The garden in St. James's University Hospital’s grounds provides good value - Yorkshire Post Letters

The spend on designing and building a garden in the grounds of St. James's University Hospital in Leeds for both staff and patients provides good value for the health trust (The Yorkshire Post December 16).

Garden designer Adam Frost has many awards from the Royal Horticultural Society from both Chelsea and Hampton Court flower shows for his design of gardens.

The well-being garden will help hospital staff to unwind after a stressful day at work and will aid patient recovery after surgery or illness as the garden connects with therapeutic nature. It will attract insects and birds as the flowers and seed heads will provide a food source through nectar and seeds.

The renowned garden designer and broadcaster has designed gardens at Chelsea Flower show and invited horticultural apprentices, being trained in the Royal Parks, to work with him and pass on his practical skills in construction and explaining his design vision for the award winning show garden.

I know from talking to past horticultural apprentices, who work in any of the eight of London's Royal Parks, have found this to be one of the most beneficial parts of their training by linking both design and construction from a competent mentor like Adam Frost.

It gives a somewhat unique experience compared to going to a land-based college and learning theory and later practice which is dependent on budgets set by individual park managers.

The way we work these days is probably more stressful than in years gone by as managers in the health service are having to achieve more output or efficiencies set by this and previous governments.

It makes the job more challenging with more stringent targets, which adds more additional stress to nurses and doctors, so the figures of two in five hospital staff having work related stress issues does not surprise me.

I wish that those senior managers in the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England would go and work on the wards for a week before settling targets for operations.

Many managers may have started on the wards originally as a nursing graduate gaining promotions through the grades, but each year health and social care has new challenges through new illnesses being diagnosed.

Gardening does contribute to combat depression and anxiety and 'generally speaking' those who have worked in professional gardening have tended to enjoy and live life longer than the majority of the healthy working population.

One example was Bob Corbin who lived to over a hundred years old. He was a true ambassador for horticulture, and spent a lot of his career working for the Greater London Council under its leader Ken Livingston until Margaret Thatcher abolished it.

Bob was a founder member of the Institute of Groundsmanship and had a vast collection of photographs and slides which he donated to the Royal Horticultural Society library.

When Bob Corbin retired he was an independent assessor of the Royal Parks in London, to ensure standards remained high after Lord Michael Heseltine, when he was Environment Secretary under Margaret Thatcher's government, privatised the running of the Royal Parks.

I was fortunate enough to escort or show Bob around both Richmond Park and St James's Park with the park managers.

As he was so knowledgeable about park management with decades of experience he would ask what problems we had and challenges, and we would work out solutions.

In every instance Bob would get us additional funds to improve the management of these two parks.

In conclusion it is true that being immersed in a garden is now an evidence-based way to relax with the help of the sounds of nature.