Work starts on Salisbury hospital garden named after Horatio Chapple

The £150,000 garden will be a rehabilitation area for patients with spinal injuries

Work has begun on a new garden at Salisbury District Hospital named in memory of a Wiltshire schoolboy who was killed by a polar bear last year.

Horatio Chapple, 17, from Bishopstone, died after being attacked on an expedition in Norway in August.

The £150,000 rehabilitation area is for patients at the hospital's Duke of Cornwall Spinal Treatment Centre.

Mr Chapple wanted to study medicine and had volunteered at the centre where his father is a consultant surgeon.

After he was killed, his parents set up a memorial fund to benefit the centre's garden appeal.

Designer Cleve West said "Horatio's Garden" would offer patients a "beautiful social area and a place in which to escape the day-to-day routine of hospital life".

A memorial stone to Mr Chapple will feature in the garden.

The teenager's father, David, is a trustee of the Southern Spinal Injuries Trust, the charity which led the fund-raising for the project.

He said he hoped the garden would be "a place of beauty and tranquillity where patients, their families and friends, can spend time together following this most devastating of injuries".

He added that he was "thrilled" with the design which he hoped would create a legacy to his son and would "make a difference to others on his behalf."

It is expected work will be completed on the garden by the summer.