Medicinal Garden at BBC Gardeners’ World Live 2025

Our Lifesaving Mission, Told Through a Garden

Designed by: Lucy Chapman & Helen Swan
Built by: Rupert Keys & TASK Academy
Event: BBC Gardeners’ World Live, NEC Birmingham, 12th - 15th June 2025

Midlands Air Ambulance Charity presents its debut show garden at BBC Gardeners’ World Live 2025, a poignant, immersive space inspired by the journey from medical trauma to emotional recovery. The Medicinal Garden honours the lifesaving work of the charity’s critical care teams while highlighting the powerful role nature can play in healing both body and mind.

This thought-provoking garden forms part of Midlands Air Ambulance Charity’s ongoing efforts to raise awareness of its pre-hospital emergency service and its impact across the Midlands and beyond. The design draws inspiration from the charity’s commitment to saving lives, with the garden conceived as a living narrative of crisis, care, and quiet strength.

A journey through trauma and recovery

At the heart of the Medicinal Garden is the concept of transformation. The garden is shaped by two soft mounds, sculpted landforms that cradle a winding path and symbolise the physical and emotional highs and lows of trauma and recovery. Visitors are gently guided through this symbolic terrain, moving from a place of crisis towards calm.

Carefully placed seating areas provide pause points along the way, encouraging reflection and stillness. Framed by native trees, the garden feels sheltered yet open, with filtered views that offer a quiet sense of perspective.

The planting, too, tells a story. Waves of medicinal plants in warm sunrise tones ripple across the landscape, evoking renewal and hope. Each species has been chosen for its healing properties and its connection to traditional medicine, grounding the garden in both nature and science.

Designing with empathy and intention

Created by garden designers Lucy Chapman and Helen Swan, the Medicinal Garden is as much about emotional truth as it is about visual beauty. It acknowledges the unseen wounds of trauma and honours the strength found in survival.

“The garden reflects what we hear from patients and their families, that it’s often the small things that bring comfort after trauma,” says Lucy Chapman. “Being able to walk again, feel sunlight, hear birdsong… these moments are meaningful. We wanted the garden to express that.”

“This garden is about honesty. About showing the path from trauma to transformation, and the role that nature plays in that process.” – Helen Swan

Sustainably made, symbolically planted

Sustainability is woven through every detail of the Medicinal Garden. From permeable pathways and self-seeding species, to reclaimed materials and locally sourced stone, the garden offers an inspiring alternative to conventional landscaping. It champions topography and biodiversity as design features — a model for how beauty, ecology and climate resilience can co-exist in domestic gardens.

The garden’s construction is led by Rupert Keys of TASK Academy, whose award-winning builds include high-profile show gardens at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, RHS Malvern, RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show and previous BBC Gardeners’ World Live events.

From show garden to lasting legacy

Following the show, elements of the Medicinal Garden will be relocated to Midlands Air Ambulance Charity’s new airbase and headquarters in Shifnal, Shropshire. There, it will become a permanent space for reflection, for patients, families, and the aircrew who serve them.

For supporters of the charity, the garden is more than a display, it’s a tribute to the resilience of those whose lives have been changed by trauma, and a reminder of the healing that can come from time spent outdoors.

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