Tranquillity Garden for Sick Children Takes Root

Dio Students Watch as their Vision to Create a Tranquillity Garden for Sick NZ Children Takes Root.

Two years after a handful of Dio students hatched a plan to make life easier for sick children and their families at Auckland’s Ronald McDonald House, they are proudly watching their dream take root.

Zoe Dockery, Victoria Jones, Jessica Choie and Genevieve Fox were in Year 10 when they had a vision to create a tranquillity garden where sick children and their families who come to Auckland for treatment from all over New Zealand could relax outside the hospital environment.

The girls came up with the idea to create the garden in unused land outside Ronald McDonald House as part of a BP Community Enterprise Project they entered.

What began as a reasonably modest plan – with the girls planning to help build the garden themselves – grew into a $40,000 project after they were given the go-ahead and the whole school became involved in fund raising efforts which other sponsors and private donors also supported.

The fundraising target was finally reached this year and work which began on the garden in March was scheduled to be completed within four weeks. An official opening was planned for late April.

“It’s feels as though it has been a long time coming, but it has been an amazing project to be part of and a real learning curve,” Zoe, now in Year 12, told Dio Today.

“It has given us a real sense of achievement to know that the school and the rest of the community have got right behind our original idea and everyone has worked hard to make this happen.”

Fundraising for the garden was kick started with $500 awarded when the Dio students won a merit award in BP’s competition which challenges students to come up with a project that benefits a non-profit community organisation.

Students, staff and teachers at Diocesan School went on to raise nearly half of the money needed for the garden.

As the 2009 Term One Giving project it raised $7000 and students doing 20 hours voluntary service in Year 12 last year also banded together to raise money.

Their efforts focussed on organising a Family Fun Day with the help of Palmers GardenWorld in Remuera last August which raised more than $6500.

Other donations included $5000 from a private philanthropic family trust and nearly $4,000 from individual donations. Bank of New Zealand staff helped clear large trees from the proposed garden site as part of a Closed For Good charitable initiative late last year.

To get the project underway on schedule, Stevensons donated over $5000 worth of concrete and Hirepool supplied equipment including laser cutters, chainsaws and road barriers to the project free of charge.

With initial input from Zoe, Victoria, Jessica and Geneviee, the garden was designed by Palmers’ landscape designer Dan McKay who is overseeing the team of workers contracted to create it.

Based on a High Country to Rainforest theme, the garden includes more than 300 plants including natives like coprosmas, nikau palms, pongas, grasses and pittosporums.

Features include a koru-shaped walkway, mushroom-shaped table, stepping stones for young children, a shaded seating area and a hedge with spy holes made of recycled window frames.

Ronald McDonald House Auckland CEO Beth Harman said that, thanks to the Diocesan students’ initial idea, the tranquillity garden had become a community-based project that had attracted donations from people all over New Zealand.

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