ABSTRACT
There is a long history of creating gardens attached to places of healing or spiritual care, often religious in symbolism and intent. Hospice gardens are many-layered in that they have not only to provide sanctuary and places of refuge and beauty, but also to retain some reference to the more uncultivated primal world of ‘Nature’, which many people regard as their ultimate home. The growing popularity of Japanese garden elements attests to the spiritual qualities which landscape design can provide, though ultimately each hospice garden or landscape must refl ect the topography and history of the site. There is rightly a reluctance to introduce any signifi cant elements of memorialisation into hospice gardens, as they are seen as places for the living; similarly there are dangers in designing gardens which are bland or too corporate in style.
