Why Don't We Go Into the Garden?

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.