This page contains designs of empathy gardens from around the world. While most of them already exist, some are still at the planning stage. If you would like your own empathy garden featured here, or if you have design ideas you would like to share, please email us.

Prison incarceration garden
Joint first prize winner in the recent Empathy Gardening Competition.

Iraq war garden
Tom Lawrence's brilliant design for a garden to empathise with Iraqis suffering from the continuing catastrophe of the war.

Maureen Rayburn's Cotswold empathy garden
Featured in Alex Walden's Second Message to the Gardeners of England, Maureen has planted a camellia garden for her niece and an unusual Mayan maize garden.

Allotment empathy garden
Joint first prize winner in the recent Empathy Gardening Competition

 

Prison incarceration garden

This design was submitted by Eileen Bass as an entry for the Message to the Gardeners of England special Empathy Gardening Competition, and won joint first prize:

As I'm sure you know, the great early nineteenth century prison reformer Elizabeth Fry was a Quaker. I too am a practising Quaker with an interest in prison conditions. I've long been absolutely appalled by the huge number of people imprisoned in the world's so-called 'democracies'. There's an enormous amount of research to show that prisons fail to rehabilitate people. Prison crushes the spirit out of the inmates and does little to help them lead a new kind of life when they are finally released. Prison conditions, such as forced isolation, are simply inhumane. And while big companies and their directors seem to get away with all sorts of tax evasion and other white collar crimes, having expensive legal teams to defend themselves, it's poorer people who can't get the million pound lawyers who end up behind bars.

I'm involved in several prison reform campaigns but I've also introduced a symbolic campaign in my garden. Each year I look up the statistics for prison incarceration rates (the number of prisoners per 100,000 people) for ten major 'democracies'. For instance, in 2005 the figure was 714 in the USA, 142 in England and Wales, 117 in Australia, and there were lower figures in countries like Japan (58), Norway (65) and Denmark (70). I then allocate each country a different coloured annual wildflower, and for each one count out the number of seeds that corresponds with their prison incarceration rates. So I had to count out 714 cornflower seeds for the USA and 142 field poppies for England and Wales. You can imagine how long this takes! I've been doing this annually for the last few years, scattering each country's seeds into different parts of the garden. I'm not exactly sure how it looks (I'm legally blind) but it seems to make a strong impression on my neighbours and visitors. The garden has even been featured in the local paper. My aim may seem perverse but it is simple: each year I hope to have fewer and fewer flowers in my garden.

I forgot to say that I stole this idea from George Orwell, who wrote: 'It might not be a bad idea, every time you commit an antisocial act, to make a note of it in your diary, and then, at the appropriate season, push an acorn into the ground.' Imprisonment is one of the greatest anti-social acts for which we must all take responsibility.

Iraq War Garden

Special thanks to Tom Lawrence for submitting the following design for a garden to empathise with Iraqis suffering from the continuing catastrophe of the war:

The Message to the Gardeners of England broadcast on empathy gardens made me think about the first suicide bombings in London back in July 2005. I really remember the huge emotions I felt, the combination of sorrow, horror and anger. Yet I didn't feel those same emotions for people in Iraq who, in that same month, were being subject to suicide bombings and other attacks on a daily basis and on a scale unimaginable to Londoners. I think my reaction was quite typical. We empathise more with people we know, or could know, than with those who live in far away places of which we know nothing.

Thinking about this made me realise that I'd like to make an empathy garden for Iraqis, especially civilians who might be wounded or killed as the catastrophe in Iraq continues. So I've researched into the matter and here's what I've come up with. You might consider it a bit crude or gruesome or even frivolous, but this is only my first attempt at thinking about empathy gardening.

First, I'd make a border containing plants that are commonly grown in Iraq. Of course, Iraq is different from England, having large areas of sandy desert, swamplands and mountains. But a surprising number of native Iraqi species do well in England. They include buttercups and boxthorns, and rushes and saltbush. I'd plant these, as well as a couple of small trees that are common in Iraq, such as a hawthorn and a maple. I would also experiment with plants from the glycyrrhiza genus - you can make liquorice from their dried roots and rhizomes - and also astrogalus, which has been a source of gum in Iraq for centuries. Finally, I'd try growing a few medicinal plants used by Attars - traditional Iraqi headers - such as Salvia spinosa, a form of sage, Centaurea phyllocephala, a local form of knapweed, or Achillea santolina.

Next, I would create a 'Bed of Death' containing plants that symbolise the horrors of war. There would definitely be Scarlet anenome, Anemone coronaria, which in Greek mythology received its colour from the blood of Adonis. And I'd plant some Papaver rhoeas poppies, which were a symbol of the spilt blood of Greek gods. There would be St John's wort, Hypericum perforatum: in Renaissance painting it represented the blood of the martyr St John due to its ruddy sap and the small dots of red and yellow flowers. I would also have a Clematis 'Warsaw Nike', which is named after a memorial to Polish freedom fighters and civilians who died in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Its deep red flowers are said to symbolise the colour of congealed blood. There would be Gum cistus and Black mulberry which, respectively, symbolise 'I shall die tomorrow' and 'I shall not survive you' in the Victorian Language of Flowers. Many such Victorian flower meanings derive from a Middle Eastern language of flowers called the selam. I would even go so far as to plant red Spider lilies, whose narrow, wavy flowers have the torn look of shredded skin. On the edge of the bed I'd place a cypress - probably a dwarf variety - which is a traditional symbol of death and mourning.

The third part of my Iraqi empathy garden would have a historical theme. Iraq is the site of the ancient civilisation of Babylonia, located in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, full of flowers, fruit trees, and elaborate water features, were only 70 miles south of Baghdad. The Babylonians were known not only for their artistic and scientific
achievements, but for their amazing system of canals and irrigation schemes. According to Berossus, a third century BC priest and historian of Babylon, the Babylonians grew wheat, sesame, barley and apples. So I would plant a few of these in my empathy garden to remind me that Iraq was the source of a civilisation that has done so much to shape our own.

Maybe empathy gardens like this one would send a Message to the Politicians of England.

Maureen Rayburn's Cotswold Empathy Garden

Maureen's garden was featured on the second Message to the Gardeners of England. Here is an extract from the transcript of the original radio broadcast, in which Maureen is showing Alex Walden around her empathy garden.

[sound of two people walking down a gravel path, distant tapping of a woodpecker]
AW: So Maureen, would you describe this as a typical cottage garden?
MR. Until recently it has been, Alex. On the left here I have a traditional mixed border, with plenty of herbaceous planting. I’ve got swathes of mauve and pink flowers throughout, and some large verbascums to give the border height and a tinge of yellow.
AW: It’s all looking quite delightful. But what’s going on over here on the other side of the garden?
MR: That’s the beginning of my empathy garden. I’ve dug up the beds and planted some camellias.
AW: And why’s that?
MR: It’s about my young niece, who has muscular dystrophy. I know she loves camellias so I’ve planted them to remind me of her. Every time I look at them I’m prompted to think about how she’s feeling at that moment. It actually encourages me to visit her more often. And she loves seeing them when her parents manage to bring her over here.
AW: I see you’ve also got a bed of…what looks like maize.
MR: That’s also part of my empathy garden. Last year we went on holiday to Mexico and Guatemala to see the ancient monuments left by the Mayas and Aztecs. I was incredibly moved by the poverty that people live in over there and decided I didn’t want just to return to England and slip back into my comfortable lifestyle. I wanted a constant reminder of what I’d experienced and how other people live. So I’ve planted maize, which is the staple food in that part of the world. It’s a variety called ‘Black Aztec’.
AW: And what did your neighbours think?
MR: At first they thought I was a bit crazy! But then I told them it’s like growing flowers that remind us of a favourite aunt. It’s simply taking it a step further, embracing a wider circle of people. I’ve also been growing plants that symbolise ideas related to empathy. So I’ve now planted a lot more iris, which are a traditional symbol of communication in Greek mythology. You can’t empathise with people unless you learn to communicate with them.

Allotment Empathy Garden

This design was the joint first prize winner in the Empathy Garden Competition. It was submitted by Kelvin Wadkins from at allotment association near Oxford:

For almost two hundred years allotment holders across England have acted in a spirit of cooperation and mutual aid. We share tools and seeds, sometimes help each other with the weeding and keep an eye on each other's crops. While we usually grow our produce for ourselves,
we also share some of it with neighbours and friends. I remember my Dad talking about the extraordinary friendship and cooperation amongst allotment holders during the war years. There's a huge mix of different cultures, ages and backgrounds at our allotment and that same cooperative spirit still exists.

At our annual meeting last year we discussed an old people's home right on the edge of the allotments, which had only been running a year or two. None of the inhabitants had a plot but we sometimes saw them, stuck indoors, looking out of the windows down at us digging away. No doubt some of them used to be keen gardeners or vegetable growers. It was strange that our two worlds were so separate. We ended up passing a motion that half our produce for one year would be donated to the old people's home - providing they wanted to take it. And that's exactly what we did. Even the pensioners on our site were willing to give their produce away! The elderly people at the home were delighted. A few of them now manage to come out and help us occasionally.

At a subsequent meeting we extended the scheme to involve kids at the primary school across the road. Every Wednesday afternoon a group of them come to work on the school's own allotment and to help out whoever is around on the day. We've now organised for the children to deliver all our produce to the old people's home. It's a joy for everyone involved. The nurses say that the visit from the school kids is a weekly highlight for those at the home and a relief from the loneliness that most of them feel. The pupils have started doing a little oral history project, recording the elderly people talking about their lives and memories. I think it's important that we improve communication across the generations.

We plan to keep going with the scheme for the next season and to link up with another local allotment, which has an organic market garden and orchard that is a horticultural therapy project for people recovering from mental illness.

Our scheme seems like empathy gardening in action to me. We hope you think so too.