By IAN LEWIS

Green-fingered cancer patients are benefiting from the therapeutic qualities of gardening after Lottery funding was used to sow the seeds of a special scheme.

The money has enabled a horticultural therapy department to be set up at Ilkley's Ardenlea Marie Curie Centre with day care patients creating colourful bowls of bulbs which have been placed by the bedsides of in-patients.

Current ventures include creating flowering baskets for Mother's Day and Easter as well as hanging baskets which will be used to brighten up the centre itself.

The project is being funded through a £2,700 grant from the National Lottery's Help the Hospices Millennium Awards scheme, which has paid for tools, bulbs, seeds, cold frames, gardening books and a camera to document the venture as it develops.

Marie Curie is expected to move to its new £5.4 million hospice in Leeds Road, Bradford, next year. Then the project, spearheaded by volunteer Hazel Fordham, will be expanded to include raised flowerbeds, a greenhouse and sensory garden.

Hazel Kennedy, a day care nurse at Ardenlea and its horticultural therapy assistant, said: "Gardening is very therapeutic because it takes people's minds away from thinking about their illness and gives them another focus. It gets them involved in working with other people in groups and back to things like gardening which they may have stopped doing at home.

One of the day care patients, Sheila Booth, 65, of Woodside, Bradford, who is in remission, said: "Anything that can take your mind off things for a few hours has to be a good thing and if you are in pain it helps you to forget about that for a little while as well. It's a brilliant project."

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