Press release

Wellbeing garden finished as National Trust Cymru celebrates a year in partnership with Cerebral Palsy Cymru

Published:: 22 March 2023

National Trust Cymru staff with children, staff and families from Cerebral Palsy Cymru in their new wellbeing garden in Cardiff — Finishing touches being added to Cerebral Palsy Cymru’s wellbeing garden | © National Trust Images/Paul Harris

On Tuesday 21 March, National Trust Cymru joined Cerebral Palsy Cymru at their children’s centre in Cardiff to celebrate a year in partnership and the completion of a new accessible wellbeing garden.

Cerebral Palsy Cymru, which provides therapy and support for children and families across Wales living with cerebral palsy, moved to the new building in Cardiff in 2021. Over the last 12 months National Trust Cymru have transformed the courtyard area into a green space where families and staff can easily access nature, spend time outside, and improve their wellbeing.

Joined by the young people currently participating in the charity’s ‘ESCAPADES!’ group therapy project, which is kindly funded by BBC Children in Need, the gardening team from the Trust’s Dyffryn Gardens, near Cardiff, put the finishing touches to the new outdoor area.

As part of an outdoor planting group therapy session, the young people, aged between 12 to 15 years old, helped add some spring colour to the accessible planters. Added to this were bespoke accessible garden furniture, built, and installed by Trust gardeners and volunteers from Dyffryn Gardens who designed the garden last year.

Attending the opening celebration was Lhosa Daly, Director, National Trust Cymru who said: ‘Working with partners, National Trust Cymru aims to increase access to green spaces in and around urban areas, so that more people are within easy reach of nature and beauty.

'We are delighted to see the joy that this new garden brings to the children, families and staff at Cerebral Palsy Cymru. Today we celebrate together a year of this special partnership and leave a wonderful legacy for everyone at the centre to benefit from for years to come.’

Cerebral Palsy Cymru’s Director of Fundraising and Communications, Marie Wood, added: 'It was a pleasure to see our partnership with the National Trust Cymru team come together for this wonderfully interactive and sensory session for the young people we’re supporting through our ESCAPADES! project. Our outdoor space is now beautifully transformed for our families, visitors and staff to enjoy as we head into springtime. We would certainly not have had the time and resource to make this happen had it not been for this wonderful partnership.'

The addition of a blossom tree was a marker of it being a year since the two charities began their partnership, a relationship which was championed by TV presenter and author Lucy Owen who is an ambassador for Cerebral Palsy Cymru. Lucy was drawn to National Trust Cymru's #BlossomWatch campaign when writing her book ‘Flower Girl’ and the partnership blossomed from there.

To launch the partnership and to celebrate the Trust’s annual #BlossomWatch campaign they planted trees and snowdrops together at Dyffryn Gardens last spring.

On hearing about the wellbeing gardens completion Lucy Owen said: ‘To see what these wonderful charities are doing together makes me so happy. Knowing that children and their families who use the CP Cymru centre now have an accessible, therapeutic garden where they can enjoy all the benefits nature can bring, is pure joy for me - and it shows the real-life magic that can spring from little books.’

Through the partnership National Trust Cymru also provided free access passes to the 350 families Cerebral Palsy Cymru supports right across Wales to help the conservation charity to review some of the accessibility challenges at places they care for.