The therapeutic qualities of gardens are increasingly being recognised as a way to improve the health of care home residents.
When the residents with dementia at Emerson Court in Havering, north-east London, last went for a “day out at the seaside”, they simply wandered down the garden to their own purpose-built beach, complete with sand and ice-cream van. Soon they will also have a beach hut.
The transformation of the garden at the 21-bed residential care home is being made possible thanks to a pot of money from the Department of Health to improve the surroundings in which the UK’s growing population of people with dementia live. Last week, the DH announced a £50m fund for 74 care and nursing homes and 42 NHS schemes across England.
Emerson Court teamed up with three other local care homes – Abbcross, Upminster and Parkside – to bid for a share of the money as a consortium and was successful in winning £257,000 to carry out an imaginative facelift of the facilities at each. There will be a raised fish pool at Abbcross, a covered area at Upminster to allow the garden to be used all year round, and at Emerson Court, the beach hut will be accompanied by the installation of water features, looped paths, safe fencing and path surfaces, and sensory beds.
James Brennan, director of Havering Care Homes, is passionate about the benefit that the cash will give to the four homes, which have already collaborated to organise themed days at Emerson Court, such as a “day out to Southend” in June and a ”holiday in Italy” recreated with the help of music and food in the garden.
“It is vital that we get the gardens in our homes right for people with dementia,” he says. “Residents derive real calm and serenity from having access to an open and safe environment.”
The person who will make this happen for the Havering consortium, and several other successful garden schemes, is RHS gold medal winner and specialist dementia garden designer, Kim Grove. Grove was a nurse until a visit to her grandmother in a care home showed her the inadequacies and potential dangers lurking outside and she decided to change track.
Grove says she saw a woman with dementia repeatedly trying to escape from a side gate and ending up running in a loop from the garden into the house. She spotted toxic plants, uncomfortable seats, and features, such as a pagoda, that were never used. It spurred her to research and write a guide for creating safe and appropriate gardens for people with dementia.
“It does not have to cost a lot,” says Grove. “But why don’t they [care homes] just talk to people and ask them what sort of garden they would like?”
In the garden of Brockfield House care home near Stanwick, in Northamptonshire, Grove has ensured that every plant is edible, with alpine strawberries nestling among the herbs, and raised beds bring plant life nearer to eye view.
Resident Alan Jones, 77, used to pride himself on his garden. Since Grove installed the raised beds at Brockfield House, staff have found him keen to help with the weeding, even though his condition makes it difficult for him to participate in many activities.
Care home manager Lesley Turner says she encourages residents to weed the sensory beds, and to take part in social activities in the garden. “We often find that taking them into different settings really improves their behaviour. It’s quite amazing how different they are,” she says.
There has been a growing understanding in the healthcare sector about the importance of the healing environment, ever since US experimental psychologist Roger Ulrich’s groundbreaking 1984 study proved that surgery patients with a view of nature suffered fewer complications, used less pain medication and were discharged sooner than those with a view of a brick wall. Since then, research has been building, suggesting that gardens can specifically improve the health of people with dementia in a number of ways, from encouraging cardiovascular exercise, stimulating the appetite and increasing vitamin D levels, to improving mood, relieving stress, and providing an activity to share with family and carers.
The charity Thrive uses gardening to help people with a range of mental health problems, including soldiers experiencing post-traumatic stress. Its recent research with early-onset dementia patients showed that, over a year, participants’ memory and concentration remained unchanged, but that mood and sociability improved.
Faced with a growing elderly population, an estimated cost to the economy from dementia of £23bn, and an expectation that the number of people with the condition will increase from 820,000 people to more than 1 million by 2025, the government last year launched the Dementia Challenge. It has also commissioned the King’s Fund to develop a number of programmes to enhance the dementia environment. In the first wave of the scheme, in 2010, 23 NHS trusts were given an initial £500,000 worth of grants for garden improvement projects.
Launching this second, much larger, tranche of funding, health secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “There is little doubt that our home and work environment has an important impact upon our day-to-day lives – and our care environment is no exception. We can encounter any number of places and spaces in one day, and yet, for someone with advanced dementia, even walking from one room to another can be difficult. This pilot scheme will form an important first step towards driving forward better care environments for people with dementia.”
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jul/30/dementia-gardening-helping-people
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