VOLUNTEERS are helping to spruce up a memorial garden for parents to remember the children they have lost.

Green-fingered Royal Voluntary Service volunteers, David and Cynthia East-wood, are giving up their spare time to refresh the maternity bereavement garden at Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

The garden is part of the Fay Turner Suite, an area kept separate to the busy main maternity suite to allow families who have lost a baby to reflect and spend time away from it all.

Fay Turner was a medical secretary at the former Ronkswood Hospital and it was her family who donated mon-ey to the maternity department to create the bereavement suite in 1994.

This year Patti Paine, head of midwifery at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Trust, thought it was time to brighten the garden up and was delighted when Mr and Mrs Eastwood responded to her appeal for help.

The caring couple are no strangers to volunteering at the hospital, already giving up their time once a week to point patients and visitors in the right direction as ‘way-finders’.

And Mrs Eastwood said their new pursuit was just another chance to help patients and their families.

“We said we’d give it a go because we want to make things a bit better for the families who use the garden,” she said.

“It’s a bit different to our usual volunteering role as wayfinders.”

And Mr Eastwood said they had already set out plans for the bereavement garden.

“We enjoy gardening and we’ve had some good advice on what is this best thing to grow here,” he said.

“We’re aiming to keep things low maintenance and to plant plenty of shrubs.”

Mrs Paine said their efforts will have a real impact on visitors.

“We have families who come back every year to remember the child they lost,” she said.

“We are so grateful to David and Cynthia for their help to brighten things up, it will really make a difference to parents at such a difficult time.”