Relocation of the baby memorial garden – University Hospital of North Durham (November 2023)

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we move through our plans to relocate the baby memorial garden at the University Hospital of North Durham.

We would like to apologise for the delay with the project as we have had to manage some additional planning requirements relating to the demolition of the east wing corridor on the site which have impacted on the relocation timescales.

We are making progress. We have now removed and safely stored all of the plaques and memorabilia from the existing garden and work is underway on the new space.

We'd like to share with you some further updates and do hope to be back in touch with you soon to confirm an opening date for the new garden and to invite you to an official opening event.

When we relocate the plaques in the new space this will be done in alphabetical order as we discussed during the engagement sessions. All of the plaques and memorabilia were photographed while in situ in the existing garden and the memorabilia items will be placed back in the same order in the new space. However, once the garden is complete and open, loved ones will be welcome to move any of these items should you so wish.

The secure gate and new fencing is being put in place and the top soil will be relocated to the new garden over the coming weeks.

You may see some social media activity over the next couple of weeks as we would like to offer our local businesses and communities the opportunity to be involved with the garden relocation by supporting us with additional plants and seating for the garden to help enhance the new space. If any of you would like to know more about this then please contact Gillian.curry1@nhs.net

We still also need to finalise the plans for a sculpture in the new garden and the plans to potentially use the existing tree in the current garden. We are working to identify a local artist to help with this part of the project.

We would also at this stage like to ask you to share your views on the name of the new garden.

You may recall from some of the original artist impressions that the new garden is shaped like a figure 8, which also looks like an infinity symbol. This seems to hold some potential symbolism for the new garden and we therefore wondered what your thoughts would be on naming the garden the 'infinity garden'. We have set up a short survey to ask for your views on this or any alternative suggestions you may have: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/UHNDbabygarden

We will continue to share updates with you directly and on our website but please do get in touch if you have any queries: paulabrennan@nhs.net