Biophilia: Bedside Florilegium (2020)
Great Ormond Street Hospital, London
This mobile lightbox created as a work that can be wheeled to individual bedsides, brings flowering plants from the GOSH rooftop garden into the intimate spaces of hospital wards to support children who are confined to their beds.
It includes pressed plants that are renowned for their healing properties interwoven with pressed samples of flowers that came into bloom on the rooftop garden during the Summer of 2020.
Backlit within a lightbox, the delicate pressed plants radiate the fragile beauty and life-affirming power of nature, providing a connection to the natural world outside the ward.
Hospital staff supported its creation, collecting flower samples from the rooftop garden as they took their breaks - still wearing full PPE - during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The beautiful GOSH rooftop garden designed by Chris Beardshaw provides a secluded and reflective space for staff and the families of children undergoing treatment. Originally created for the Morgan Stanley Chelsea Flower Show, the garden was adapted and rebuilt at the hospital in 2016 by the DIY SOS Television series team.
This artwork champions the vital role of hospital gardens to support patients, their visitors and staff, as the biophilia phenomenon becomes increasingly recognised as an essential human need for health and wellbeing.
This project is part of our programme of work supporting communities to connect to their locales, the natural world and one another. Read more.
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