Life-changing gift for Warwick schoolgirl

Hannah Eykyn woke up to a garden full of new adventures and excitement after national charity WellChild sent a team to her house to give it a transformation.

Her parents Tara and Stephen Eykyn have recently completed major alterations to their home near Emscote Road, Warwick, to accommodate Hannah’s disabilities, which include cerebral palsy, quadriplegia and epilepsy.

But the couple had no time – or energy – to do much with their garden.

That was until Tuesday and Wednesday this week when the charity sent in a team of volunteers to transform their back garden into an adventure playground.

Hannah, who goes to Ridgeway School, now has her own wheelchair-accessible garden swing, along with a sunken trampoline and new range of paths and artificial grass surfaces on which to learn to ride her bike. Her delighted mum Tara said: “Hannah loves being outdoors but usually when we go in St Nicholas Park we can only feed the ducks as there is no specialist equipment for disabled children and the big bowl-shaped swing is nearly always full of other children.

“Until now our garden has been a bit of a building site and not suitable for Hannah at all. And that’s always a shame because she loves being hung upsidedown and swung around - she’s a bit of an adrenalin junkie.

“She can’t talk or walk or sit but she can smile and laugh and is a very bright, happy little girl. Her eyes were huge when she saw what the volunteers had done to our garden.”

The charity WellChild sends in one or two project supervisors for garden makeovers and recruits teams of volunteers who are given a couple of days off work.

Hannah’s new garden was created by West Midlands’ workers from credit experts Experian and commercial real estate firm Colliers.

Tara said: “I can’t thank the charity and all the volunteers enough - this is really going to help with Hannah’s physical development.”

An application was made on behalf of the Eykyns by Tara’s sister, Rachel Robinson, who also lives in Warwick.