Memorial Garden: here’s a first look

When Coleraine mother Andrea McAleese floated the idea about a memorial garden on facebook, she was inudated with offers of support.

Andrea lost her little girl Roma back in 2009, after she suffered fatal injuries after she was knocked down outside her Ashdale Park home.

Little Roma was just three.

The inspirational Coleraine mum feels that a memorial garden would benefit the local community and help with the grieving process.

In teh space of a month, over £4,000 has been raised towards the project.

Offers of help have come from as far away as Australia.

Coleraine man, Stephen Todd who now lives in Australia has offered to design the garden free.

Stephen is a landscape designer, after reading about Andrea’s proposal he said he ‘felt he had to do something’ to help.

So he began drafting up plans, and this is what he’s designed for the site, identified by Andrea, near Cloonavin, along the Portstewart Road in Coleraine.

We contacted Stephen last week, speaking from his new home in Melbourne he told The Times: “The basic idea behind the garden is a that it has been designed as a dignified space to remember and reflect on lost lives.”

Highlighting specific parts of the design, Stephen when on: “The double circle represents the single cell splitting and becoming two at the formation of life itself.

“A glass ‘fountain of life’ has references to the baptism and celebration of a new life arriving. There’s individual brass stars fixed on a wall which could be inscribed with each missed child.

“The rear of the curved wall is sheeted with brushed stainless steel as the “wall of reflection’ - my idea is that perhaps people can leave personal notes and poems on this wall. The angel sculptures are designed to rotate in the wind making the garden kinetic and introducing the sense of wonder children so unselfishly share.”