A new well-being and sensory garden has officially opened as part of plans to further improve the caring environment at a mental health facility for young people.
The new gardens are available for services users at Forest Lane and in-service patients at Forest House near Radlett.
The site has been designed to offer different therapeutic areas to meet, relax, or meditate.
This includes a kitchen garden, orchard, meadow, and a retreat.
Sandra Brookes, executive director of service delivery and experience at Hertfordshire University Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The garden is an area of exceptional beauty, diversity and quiet and is an enormous addition to what we are able to offer at Forest Lane.
“It is widely recognised that outside spaces, areas of calm and working creatively with plants and the environment, can be a real help during treatment and supporting recovery. The garden will also help our clinical and administrative staff, when not working, with the opportunity to be somewhere that they can enjoy, relax and reflect in."
Ms Brookes added: “The garden offers windows for creative expression that could be as simple as engaging in an activity such as gardening or making something, or the act of tending the immediate environment and nurturing plants which we know have strong symbolic and therapeutic values in care.”
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