TV presenter, Janet Ellis, speaks about her “love affair” with gardening, which started the first day she entered the Blue Peter Garden; gardening supremos Arabella Lennox-Boyd and Dan Pearson discuss designing therapeutic gardens for Maggie’s Centres; Lord Richard Rogers explores the designing of Maggie’s London Centre’s series of internal and external spaces, working against the odds of such an urban setting; while famed architecture critic, Charles Jencks, gives a personal account of how he and his late wife, Maggie’s Keswick Jencks (founders of Maggie’s Centres), explored the fundamental laws and forces behind nature in their design and development of the Garden of Cosmic Speculation at Maggie’s family home at Portrack House.

Maggie’s is this year's supporting charity for the Royal Horticultural Society's Charity Gala Preview of the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show.  The prestigious event, a midsummer’s evening of entertainment, champagne, spectacular fireworks and the very best of horticulture, will raise in the region of £10,000 for Maggie’s London at Charing Cross Hospital. Maggie’s VIP supporters who have contributed to the Souvenir Brochure, which also contains recipes from celebrity chefs and top tips on growing your own fruit and veg, were in attendance on the night.

Maggie’s was a natural choice as a supporter to the event, as Maggie’s greatly value outdoor and gardening spaces as an important component of their programme of support for people affected by cancer.  Maggie’s Centres are beautifully designed buildings, which offer professional support to help people with cancer, their friends and family, to build a life beyond cancer. Maggie’s London has seen over 10,000 people through their doors, since opening in April 2008.

Maggie’s Centres were the vision of the author and garden designer Maggie Keswick Jencks, when she herself was treated for cancer.  Maggie died in 1995 with the blueprint for the centres in her hands.  Six Maggie’s Centres now operate across the UK, with the majority having landscaped gardens for centre users to enjoy.

Maggie’s first official therapeutic garden was opened by the Duchess of Cornwall in June 2009 at Maggie’s Dundee.  The garden, designed by five times Chelsea Flower Show winner, Arabella Lennox-Boyd, contains a labyrinth, dramatic stepped mounds and a specially commissioned statue by Anthony Gormley.

Speaking about the design, Arabella, who was a friend of Maggie’s, said: “Like Maggie Keswick Jencks, I strongly believe in the healing, theraputic powers of nature and landscape. It was a great privilege, as well as a challenge, to answer the practical, spiritual and intellectual requirements of this extraordinary project.”  In her extract, Arabella goes on to discuss the dramatic stepped earthworks, which are in homage to Maggie Keswick Jencks' own designs at Portrack Garden.

Patron of Maggie’s London, Janet Ellis, tells a personal account of her love affair with gardening, saying: “I grew up an ‘army kid’, forever on the move. My parents did their best with the lawns and beds that came with each army quarter, but none of us formed any real attachment to them.  Even when I had my first garden, as a newly-wed, it was a place to keep tidy enough to sit in, or for Sophie – my first-born – to play.  It wasn’t till I stood in that small yet precious space, created and cared for by a master gardener, that I saw how rewarding a garden could be.”

The renowned gardening designer and journalist, Dan Pearson, speaking about his design at Maggie’s London, said: “We chose to protect the building with a screen planting of over 100 Betula albosinensis ‘Septentrionalis’ which filter noise and pollution. As soon as you enter the Maggie’s Centre they create the feeling that you are cushioned by the green of a garden.  The ingenious design of the building carefully integrates three internal winter gardens and sun-filled roof terraces, so that you are never more than a step away from the healing power of vegetation.”

The fuller extracts can be found in the Charity Gala Preview programme.