Our HT Challenge

Horticultural Therapy for injured personnel in the UK – “Therapy by stealth; you enjoy it so much you don’t notice the pain”

HighGround is the only UK charity delivering Horticultural Therapy to seriously injured members of our Armed Forces as part of their rehabilitation process.

Please help! We need your help and support to raise £354,000 to finance another 3 years of Horticultural Therapy for patients undergoing the rehabilitation process. This sum will cover the costs of the sessions for a standard 3 week admission period (some patients keep coming back for more rehab for several years), which includes staff and equipment costs, and the transition period from Headley Court to Stanford Hall.

Funded entirely by charitable donations, HighGround has just completed a 3-year pilot scheme at the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC) at Headley Court in Surrey.

It clearly demonstrated the benefits of Horticultural Therapy as part of the rehabilitation process: “now recognised as a valuable component of the holistic care package which the DMRC delivers to its patients at Headley Court”¹. This view is reinforced by an independent external academic evaluation².

Moving To Stanford Hall

In 2018 Headley Court is closing and the DMRC’s services will transfer to the Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre (DNRC) at Stanford Hall in Nottinghamshire, created by the late Duke of Westminster. This will be a remarkable facility, providing the best possible care and clinical rehabilitation for seriously wounded members of our Armed Forces.

Our Horticultural Therapy Challenge was launched at the end of 2016 to raise the £354,000 it will cost HighGround to continue to deliver our services to injured patients at Headley Court and then Stanford Hall for the next 3 years.

If this matters to you then please donate now.

Carol Sales, Horticultural Therapist, with Chief Tech Lee Edwards planting the first tree at Headley Court’s ‘Home Thoughts from Abroad garden.

1 Surgeon-General, Defence Authority for Healthcare in the Defence Medial Services Department
2 By Dr Zoe Morrison of Aberdeen University based on feedback from Occupational Therapists at DMRC