Forest Lane CAMHS Garden

Radlett, Hertfordshire

Therapeutic Landscapes

Transformation of the external landscape at a children and adolescent mental health service, creating a therapeutic garden shaped around movement, choice, nature and different ways of being together.

A new therapy room within the garden allows young people to approach sessions through the landscape rather than institutional corridors. Growing spaces encourage a different relationship with food, while a meditation maze, rich planting and mature trees sit alongside places for individuals, pairs and larger groups.

Developed closely with clinical practitioners, the design balances therapeutic opportunity with the rigorous risk management and anti-ligature requirements of a mental health setting.

Scope

Landscape strategy · Therapeutic landscape design · Planting design · Anti-ligature design · Clinical collaboration · Detailed design

Path curving beneath mature trees past the meditation maze mown into the lawn, with a tree seat beyond

Well-being Garden layout plan showing the meditation labyrinth, welcome garden, kitchen garden, retreat therapy room and routes through the garden

View through the open timber gate into the garden, with the therapy room beyond the wildflower planting

Timber-clad therapy room set within rich perennial planting and mature trees

Greenhouse and raised growing beds in the kitchen garden beneath a shade sail

Orange and yellow rudbeckia flowering against soft grasses and autumn foliage

Painted pebbles collected in a stone-clad water bowl within the pebble river

Large natural boulders set among flowering daisies and low wildflower planting

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