The leader of the United Reformed Church in Wales, the Revd Peter Noble, helped other church leaders to create a ‘sanctuary garden’ in Cardiff. The aim was to bring the attention of visitors at the Royal Horticultural Society Cardiff Flower Show, to the complicated issues surrounding asylum seekers in the UK.

Peter Noble said: ‘Those churches who together have conceived and made this bold garden are to be congratulated for their imaginative way of bringing this issue  to our attention. That it needs to be created, itself reflects something worrying about the sort of community being shaped by unjust policies.'

The garden was the idea of a local Churches Together group in the  Whitchurch, Rhiwbina and Birchgrove  areas of Cardiff. The group’s representative, Gill Peace, described the Sanctuary as a ‘garden with a mission’.  It symbolises the dangers and hardships from which those seeking sanctuary have fled; spiral stonework shows the difficult path they have travelled to reach a place of safety and indicates that despite the hope for safety the reality may not be that easy. 

The picture shows the Revd Peter, Noble, who is Moderator of the Synod of Wales of the United Reformed Church (second from the left),  helping to prepare the garden, with other other church leaders.