A MUCH-missed stalwart from Bournemouth’s Cherry Tree nursery is to be remembered there permanently.

Tim Boswell owed his life to the project in North Bournemouth, according to his mother. He was one of the first people recovering from mental illness to be given sheltered employment there and remained for 20 years.

Tim died aged 54 of motor neurone disease at the end of 2010 and a bench has been dedicated to him in the nursery’s wild garden, where his ashes are interred.

His mother Olive Boswell, 86, from Moordown, said Cherry Tree and its manager Jessica Davies had helped Tim immeasurably.

“In my view they saved his life because before he went there, he had made four attempts on his life,” she said.

“He went there just afterwards and he never did it again because whenever he was very down and anxious, Jess always spent time talking to him. She was wonderful. “

After Tim died, his younger brother Jon started raising money for Cherry Tree by selling Tim’s DVD and CD collection at his shop, the delicatessen Food For Thought in Ringwood High Street. Customers started adding their own discs to the sale. Donations at the time of Tim’s funeral raised £450 towards dedicating the bench, while the fundraising by Jon and his customers raised £1,050 for Cherry Tree.

“Historically, people with Timmy’s kind of condition would have been locked up in hospital and the keys thrown away and they weren’t made to feel part of the community,” said Jon.

Olive said: “He was very courageous with his last illness. It was a sad life and yet most of the time he coped and was happy.”

The money raised in Tim’s memory was set aside for emergencies and some of it will be used to buy an industrial size dishwasher after the nursery’s existing model broke down. Jessica Davies, manager at the Cherry Tree, said: “It couldn’t be more fitting, he was a lovely man.”