Bloom Dementia-Friendly Garden
Dementia can bring difficulties with short-term memory, comprehension, orientation, spatial awareness, visual perception, and mobility. These difficulties are gently accommodated in the ‘Bloom Dementia-Friendly Garden’, where a clever use of layout, color, planting and customized garden fittings creates an attractive, safe and therapeutic outdoor space. It is designed to tap into a person’s retained skills, abilities, interests, and memories.
Plants from the person’s youth – here daisies, lupins, lavender and dianthus – trigger memories and facilitate reminiscence. Scented flowers, flowing water and birdsong stimulate the senses. Zoning and colors provide visual cues, helping with orientation and wayfinding. The accessible raised planter, mini glasshouse and tool shed, and vertical planter give easy access to gardening activities and engagement with nature. It was designed with one couple in mind, Pauline, and Andrew. The stone wall and wildflowers and grasses remind Pauline of her childhood spent on a farm and the water feature reminds Andrew of the stream that ran near his childhood home.
A landscape garden company, research center, and dementia training organization are the dynamic team behind the Bloom Dementia Friendly Garden (DFG). The design is led by Tom Grey, a Research Fellow at TrinityHaus, Trinity College Dublin, who with his architectural background, has undertaken many age-friendly and dementia-friendly design projects. The journey to Bloom began in 2013 when Clive Jones of a landscape company, Newtown Saunders Ltd, supported by Enterprise Ireland (EI), funded TrinityHaus to undertake a research project into dementia-friendly gardens. Sinead Grennan and Noreen Keane, representing Sonas apc, an award-winning dementia training organization, came on board in 2015, and the research results were piloted. Newtown Saunders Ltd, again supported by EI, funded a DFG design service for four centers, and was inundated with applications. The team worked with the winning centers in Leitrim, Limerick, Cork and Dublin to collaboratively design therapeutic gardens for …(View profile)
Source: Bloom 2017 Small Garden – Bloom Dementia-Friendly Garden
