The first critical care patients have sampled the therapeutical benefits of the hospital's pioneering rooftop critical care garden.

Speaking to HM, Dr Tom Best, clinical director of King's Critical Care, said the launch of the service was the ‘icing on the cake' of the £65m, 60-bed Critical Care Centre, which opened at the beginning of the Covid pandemic in April 2020.

‘The roof was always going to be the last part of the project, partly because it's entirely funded by our charity,' Dr Best explained.

‘We really started work on the project about a year and a half ago and had an amazing team who delivered that on time and on budget.'

Designed by Nigel Dunnett, former Professor of Planting Design, Urban Horticulture and Vegetation Technology at the University of Sheffield, who sadly recently passed away, and British garden designer Sarah Price, a three-time RHS Chelsea Flower Show gold medallist, the £2m rooftop critical care garden was funded by King's College Hospital Charity.

The roof garden has space for up to six beds, allowing each patient to be close to a specially designed weatherproof medical cabinet which houses power, data and medical gas supplies.

The garden has been designed using aromatic species, including rosemary, sage and oregano, and tactile plants such as lamb's ear, to optimise sensory stimulation and therapeutic benefits for patients, and also boasts panoramic views of the surroundings.

‘The location we built has a great view of park on the other side of the railway line,' Dr Best said.

‘Just the view of the park is something that we really wanted to capture, because just seeing out the window is hugely impactful, and we often lose those benefits in these urban hospitals in cities like London.'

As part of ongoing research by the department, the Critical Care team will study whether accessing the garden improves patient recovery and reduces length of stay, as well as tracking patients' long-term physical, cognitive and psychological outcomes.

There will be an additional focus on how families and staff benefit from using the space, particularly in managing stress levels.

‘We've got a little bit of funding to do some local high-quality observational research, where we're going to be looking at physiology and getting a real idea of how that's affected by the outdoor space and the impact on our patients,' Dr Best explained.

‘We've already approached NIHR, who are very interested in the project, and particularly in us potentially doing a multi-centre study.

‘Once we've got our observation data we will have a better idea of the shape of a multi-centre study and that's when we collaborate with lots of other people around the country. At the moment we're calling that "fresh air therapy".

‘I think we will look at other broader concepts as well. We might look at approaching people like Wellcome, because they're very interested in the environment and concepts like biophilia, and they've got a wider kind of remit and we can maybe have a look at some applications around that.

‘I think what we really want to be able to show is gardens are good for our mental health.'

Dr Best said the response from patients and families had been ‘amazingly positive'.

‘It's such a positive change from even our unit, which we've created to make hopefully less intimidating than some of the older intensity care units,' he said.

‘There's a certain group of patients where we can see the benefit is going to be there.

‘And when you choose to care for patients outside, the benefits the clinicians can observe is really tangible. It's very visible.'