In conjunction with HELL Pizza, Registered Master Landscapers Canterbury members are undertaking a $45k project to build four-year-old Seb Turner the back yard of his dreams!
Seb suffers from Aplastic Anaemia, a rare bone marrow condition. The usual treatment is a bone marrow transplant, but after failing to find a suitable match from a worldwide register of 36 million potential donors, doctors put Seb through a form of chemotherapy that reset his immune system.
Seb’s mum Caroline reached out to HELL Pizza through Satan’s Little Helper, an initiative to give a break to kids going through a tough time.
HELL considered that a four-year-old who is so immune-compromised he can’t play with others, with a back garden so bare, it doesn’t provide much opportunity to even have fun by himself, has it pretty tough. So, it placed an ad in NZ Landscaper asking for help to build a back yard fit to play in.
Roger Morgan from Readylawn answered the call and rallied other Registered Master Landscapers (RML) members to get involved.
A number of landscapers from the local community stuck their hands up and offered to manage the entire thing for free!
Together with Morgan, Ollie Newman from OnLandscapes, and Xteriorscapes Ltd’s Hayden Stark, RML Canterbury has masterminded a project with an estimated value of $45,000.
“When I saw Seb’s story in NZ Landscaper, I was immediately keen to be involved, and knew others would be too, so I brought it up at a Canterbury RML meeting.
“It didn’t take long for people to jump on board, including suppliers, and very quickly we had a really neat project under way!”
A mix of natural and artificial turf will be laid, along with decking and paving, a sandpit installed, an area for a trampoline created, a new fence erected and planters placed around the garden.
Work is scheduled to start in September, and one thing is sure – Seb is going to get the back yard he deserves.