All Black Opens Burwood Spinal Unit Playground

All Black Opens Burwood Spinal Unit’s New Playground and Garden

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Burwood Spinal Unit patients and their families are set to benefit from a new $130,000 playground and garden outside the unit.

The playground and garden will be officially opened on Thursday by Canterbury Crusaders and All Black prop Greg Somerville. Since he has been sidelined with an Achilles tendon injury, Somerville has regularly been popping in to the Unit’s gym to encourage and chat to patients. The New Zealand Rugby Foundation is also a major sponsor of the project.

The playground features a climbing wall, a huge spider web and swings. A landscaped garden and leisure area, which was the brainchild of the late Prof. Alan Clarke, the unit’s former clinical director, surrounds the playground and can be used to help patients adjust to using a wheelchair. It features a series of paths with different surfaces, such as recycled bricks, oyster shells and cobblestones, and a variety of gradients.

The garden is to be named “Angelo’s Garden” in recognition of the contribution Dr Angelo Anthony, a senior consultant at the Unit, has made throughout 33 years of continuous service.

The idea for the playground came about after a former rugby player, Wayne Chapman, who had undergone treatment for a spinal injury, met New Zealand Rugby Foundation Chairman Maurice Trapp and suggested that the Unit needed a playground for inpatients’ children.

The Foundation, which helps injured rugby players, has contributed $45,000 towards the project. “From the Rugby Foundation’s perspective, we’ve had rugby players in the spinal unit after an accident and injury so it’s a great vehicle for us to help out in the community,” Mr Trapp said.

Andrew Hall, Chief Executive of the New Zealand Spinal Trust, says the project has been the culmination of seven years’ planning and fundraising.

He says the project, which will make good use of the land in front of the Unit, will keep visiting children occupied and give patients who are using wheelchairs for the first time the chance to experience “real world conditions”.

“Vital life experiences can now take place away from all the beeps and monitors, technology and doctors, while their children are laughing and playing around them.”

Burwood Spinal Unit Clinical Director Dr Xianghu Xiong says the playground and garden will be a vital part of patients’ rehabilitation. “If the patient can feel very much at home and they have a nice environment, particularly outdoors, it’s a major booster for them. Our purpose is to bring the patient back to normal life as much as possible so if they can see normal signs like children playing, it’s a huge component of their adjustment.”

ENDS

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