Creating well-being, sensory and dementia friendly gardens in care homes and other organisational environments is both rewarding and challenging. This book guides garden designers to work more effectively alongside their care and organisational clients to create well used and well-loved gardens for the long term benefit of the residents and users there. The authors' study was prompted after seeing many designed care and dementia gardens fall out of use once the initial novelty of a new space had worn off, this is clearly not what was intended nor environmentally sustainable.
They set out to answer the deceptively simple question of 'what makes care gardens actively used' and their findings shocked and challenged them; here they share their own journey and through many inspiring case studies show how this can be applied by others working in this field.
The authors' research identified a correlation between care homes practicing more advanced, person-centred, care with greater engagement outside. This handbook guides the reader through a range of stages to better support Care Settings, and other organisation's, by applying a 'Relationship-Centred Design' approach to design delivery. This ensures the organisational culture is understood and incorporated into all stages of a design's process ensuring a garden is used long after the designer has left.
The handbook provides a detailed yet practical and easy to use tool to identify the current organisational 'care culture' influencing engagement by providing a range of simple questions to ask, areas to validate or investigate and then recommends the most beneficial support to provide.
Real-life stories illuminate this thought-provoking book bringing to life how to ensure gardens are meaningfully developed and used, and with particular reference to people living with dementia. It guides the reader into the impact of the wider care organisation's practices, the people supporting those who live there, and how, and even if, they enable the garden to be used by residents. This book should be in the toolbox for all garden designers working with care, or other institutional, settings providing guidance from the first contact with a client right through to implementation of the most appropriate support that may be required. This may not be what is traditionally expected.
A wider range of care related design insights are also explored including several hidden dangers where designers can inadvertently introduce new obstacles to engagement, avoiding adding gimmicks, along with some quick wins.
Finally, there is a 'call to action' for more research, in this under investigated field, on areas where conflicts exist between current garden design guidance and observed positive, yet contradictory, practices. The authors' aim with this book is to support the continuing development of best practices for Garden Designers that is aligned with, and supportive of, the care sectors requirement to deliver person-centred care.
This handbook compliments the earlier published 'Care Culture Map and Handbook' which supports care settings on a culture change journey to improved care practices and greater engagement outside and is part of the 'Why don't we go into the garden?' series of books and tools. The two publications support the necessary changes in practices to both parties, carers and designer, in creating a new garden with greatest likelihood of it being actively used for the long term benefiting the residents who live there and ensuring wise investment too.
