A Garden Lit with Love returns to Dove House

If you are looking for something quiet and festive to do in Hull this December, Dove House Hospice is bringing back 'A Garden Lit with Love', its charity light trail and lantern display. It is the kind of thing that is easy to drop into with younger or older family members in tow, and this year it is being billed as bigger and brighter than before, with the display reaching further into the hospice grounds than in previous years and extending onto the woodland walk for the first time ever.

The appeal of the trail is in how it is put together. It is not a professional light show bought off the shelf; the sponsored lanterns are decorated individually by people attending Dove House's wellbeing groups, including Living Well, Hearts in Bloom, Tea & Talk and Friday Friends, while children supported by Roots of Support make handmade ornaments for the trees in memory of a loved one. Alongside those, there are sponsored Christmas trees and fairy lights, so the whole route is built from things made and sponsored by people in the community rather than a single contractor. The switch-on is set for Wednesday 11 November at 4.30pm at the hospice, when sponsors are invited in to see the finished garden before it opens to everyone.

It is worth knowing what the money is actually going towards. Dove House is a charity that provides specialist, person-centred care to adults in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire living with progressive life-limiting illnesses, including cancer, neurological conditions, heart disease and respiratory disease. It has been doing that for more than 40 years, and the care is delivered by a multi-disciplinary team of consultants, doctors, nurses, therapists and social workers. The three main areas it covers are pain and symptom management, respite care and end-of-life care, and that is backed up by an inpatient unit, outpatient clinics, therapies, wellbeing groups, family support and bereavement care. The hospice is open to early referrals, on the basis that the sooner it is involved in a patient's care, the more help it can give.

The scale of the work is clearer in the numbers. 2,151 local people have been referred to Dove House, and nearly half of its patients are living with a non-cancer illness. There have been 268 referrals to the children's bereavement groups, and respite admissions were up by 92% in 2024/25. The wellbeing groups are a big part of that, with sessions like Living Well and the Anxiety and Breathlessness group, alongside family support, bereavement groups like Welcome Wednesday for adults and Roots of Support for children, and Friday Friends, a community group open to all adults in Hull and East Yorkshire.

Local businesses have stepped in to keep the lights on. KWL is the illumination partner, handling the labour, design, equipment and installation, with CEO Roger Grannon speaking about his pride in supporting the project. Kerins Doors returns as activation sponsor, and Malcolm West Forklifts is also on board, with managing director Nick West highlighting the impact Dove House has. Other sponsors include Joynsons, Kingston Cleaning Services, Adams and Green, Roclad Systems Ltd and Bright Blue Foods. If you want to get involved, local businesses can sponsor a lantern or a Christmas tree, and the switch-on on 11 November is the first chance to see it all lit up.