A charity is seeking planning permission to build a base for a book of remembrance for bereaved parents.

Making Miracles had originally intended to put up a wooden structure in the memorial garden it is creating in Rochester cemetery, Borstal Road.

But after vandals trashed the garden in July last year, the charity decided a brick building would be more secure.

The charity supports families who have high risk and life-threatening pregnancies and those who have lost a baby.

The 57sq ft building will be used to house a book of remembrance where parents can write a permanent memorial for their children.

Sally Howells, chairman of Making Miracles, said that parents who lose babies before 24 weeks cannot get a death certificate: “So there are lots of families with nothing to remember their children by.

“With the memorial garden there will always be somewhere they can go and remember them.”

There will be a flower shaped circle and parents will be able to buy pebbles which can be engraved with a name and date, before being placed in a petal.

The plans also include a small children’s area, benches, flower beds and pathways.

The probation service’s community payback team have been helping clear the area in the cemetery which has not been used since the 1960s.

Making Miracles has also held volunteer days for the local community to get involved.

“The whole community has come together because they realise there is this need for the garden,” Mrs Howells said.

She said the charity was extremely grateful to the newly appointed Dean of Rochester Cathedral Dr Philip Hesketh and said the cathedral had given them a 25-year lease for the land.

As well as raising money at their stall in Medway Maritime Hospital, Making Miracles has been given £10,000 from Aviva insurance and a grant from Dobbies garden centre, Gillingham, to help with building costs.

The Co-operative funeral care branch in Walderslade has offered to pay for the bricks for the building.

If planners give the go-ahead the memorial garden will be open between 9am and 4pm, seven days a week.