While almost all of the Chelsea Garden’s key features remain, including the signature 60-foot pergola, some design details have been reconfigured to ensure the new layout is suitable for the hospital site. The theme is ‘nurture through nature’, inspired by the idea that the shortest path to recovery leads through a garden. With shaded places to sit, water to engage the senses and late flowering perennials, grasses and bulbs, the garden will provide a place of respite and recovery for patients and staff.

Florence Nightingale was considered the pioneer of modern nursing and established the first professional nursing school in the world at St Thomas’ Hospital – the Nightingale School of Nursing – in 1860.