There are currently about three hundred such gardens in eighteen countries, and the idea has grown to encompass quiet spaces in churches, schools, hospitals and prisons.
[3] The Quiet Garden Movement started in 1992, founded by Reverend Philip Roderick, then the director of the Chiltern Christian Training Programme in the Diocese of Oxford.
He was ordained and became a university chaplain, and it was after visiting Christian communities in India and America during a sabbatical in 1992 that he realised the significance in the life of Jesus of withdrawing to a quiet place to spend time in solitude.
[1] The Quiet Garden Movement has spread over the past twenty years to encompass about three hundred gardens in many parts of the world, not only in European countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Belgium, Finland, Austria, Switzerland and Cyprus, but also in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Uganda, Brazil, Haiti, Canada and the USA.
[3] Most cater for a broad public, but some were created to serve a particular community, such as the Quiet Garden on the edge of the Nsambya Hospital in Kampala, Uganda for AIDS patients and carers.
A Quaker group in Beverley, Yorkshire, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary by creating a Quiet Garden next to their Friends meeting house.