Care Settings
Relationship Centred Garden Design for Care Homes
Are you wondering how to improve your garden or simply how to encourage residents, and staff, to step outside more? Are you considering developing the garden in your care home possibly working with a garden designer, landscape architect or other outside specialist?
Then we can help!
We found that more advanced, person-centred, care practices are the most effective route to creating active engagement within care and dementia gardens. We work with you to identify your current care practices; by this we mean your policies, procedures and attitudes, and what is hindering your efforts to step into the garden.
Where physical changes are required, we help you understand what you really need, and that matches your current capabilities to use it. We support creating care home gardens that can evolve to allow you to grow in confidence, and improved care practices, so creating much loved gardens used for the long term. This approach we call ‘Relationship-Centred Design’.
Below are a range of ways we can help:
‘Why don’t we go into the garden?’ series of books and tools
Wow!!! I am reading the book WHY DON’T WE GO INTO THE GARDEN by Debbie Carroll and Mark Rendell and am blown away! It is a GAME CHANGER in how we view care communities! It is an excellent fit with the Montessori Approach to care
‘Fresh Eyes on the Garden’ consultation support
We all know that spending time outside is good for us, yet it can be quite challenging for people living in care environments to simply step into the garden. However, the solutions are often simpler than expected.
This supportive approach brings our fresh eyes to help you unlock the barriers holding back garden engagement. Following an initial video call we undertake a 2 to 4 hour ‘Fresh Eyes on the Garden’ consultation visit. During this we will aim to understand how you engage with your garden areas you already have. Time will be spent as much inside as outside, spending time with you, your teams and where appropriate residents and families, seeking out the often subtle barriers to crossing the threshold.
Using our ‘Why don’t we go into the garden? – Care Culture Map’ tool, we help identify initial areas for quick wins, we demonstrate how to use the tool going forward to include the whole home in making progress towards more engagement outside, benefiting both your residents and teams’ health and well-being.
This support is provided for £800* plus expenses per care setting visited, plus £76 per copy of the ‘Care Culture Map and Handbook’ package. A copy for each care setting visited is recommended and it can be useful for supporting Managers in Regional/ Group roles to also have access to a copy.
Contact us now to book your initial free video call.
It was also amazing for us to see our ‘blind spots’ and this experience has given us lots to focus us, and even without the obvious challenges of climate change. We can now see there is lots more we can do, to maximise the great outdoors, and we must. Thank you Debbie.
Training & Presentations
We have two workshops supporting care organisations in increasing engagement with your garden areas. These evidence based events are highly interactive, story led and with plenty of opportunity to explore your own experiences. Whether you are looking to support a leadership team embarking on a culture change journey, or seeking training for a group of staff or a whole home there is a workshop to help get outside more.
These workshops are perfect before, or alongside, any planned physical changes to the garden ensuring the most appropriate changes are undertaken if working with a garden designer or other specialists.
We are also available as speakers for care conferences and educational settings within the care and dementia sector. These are often thought provoking presentations remembered long after the event. Get in touch to find out more.
Much more informative than I thought. Makes me think of a lot more ways to engage and assist the residents to do what they wish and enrich their lives
Garden Design Support
Our research changed us as Garden Designers and so our design support is provided within a ‘Relationship-Centred Design’ approach. This begins with us understanding how you may relate to your existing outside space and where your organisational culture sits in relation to person-centred practice.
This approach ensures the most appropriate brief is established and the most appropriate design support to provide alongside any areas to address to improve practices to stepping outside more. It is this approach that will ensure the greatest likely success of any new garden created and it will be used long after the novelty of a new space.
Our design support always begins with a ‘Fresh Eyes on the Garden’ consultation visit and the use of the ‘Care Culture Map and Handbook’ tool. Following this visit and any immediate recommended follow-on actions a detailed design quote can be provided. Alternatively we can work with your own designer to support you both in applying our approach and ensuring that any design brief allows for any changes needed to organisational practice that maybe needed prior to, or alongside, any new garden.
For more information why not give me a call to book a free initial video call or visit our shop to obtain a copy of our ‘Care Culture Map and Handbook’ and begin the review process yourself.
…You have demonstrated your specialism in this type of work and led us all through the various stages and been pivotal in the communication flows from 2023 to where we are now; I cannot praise you enough, and you are responsible for enhancing the lives of our residents, staff and visitors for many years to come…
Self Help Publications
Our Blogs share insights into some of the common areas hindering engagement with care home gardens and the considerations to improving this whether through care practices or design changes.
