Garden designers, Debbie Carroll and Mark Rendell, from Step Change Design, carried out a research project in the care sector to answer a simple question, ‘Why aren’t care home gardens used more actively?’ As they explain, the answers found had little to do with the design of the outside spaces, and more to do with the complex phenomenon of care culture.
We’ve been on an eye-opening journey. It’s fair to say that, at one point during our research project, we seriously questioned if, where, and how, a garden designer is actually needed in enabling care setting staff and residents to use their gardens more, particularly for those residents living with dementia.
What is clear now, at the end of our research, and just ahead of publication of our Care Culture Handbook and Map (now available to purchase online, at http://tinyurl.com/hgrdq37), is that we need to urgently share some insights and some possibly uncomfortable home truths with our peers in the garden design and landscape architecture sectors about the way we approach our design and consultation practices with our care sector clients.
First, however, let’s backtrack, and give a brief overview of our research and how it came about. In 2012 we got caught up in a conversation about the unease we felt about recently designed gardens in care settings that hadn’t appeared to be used, and needed to be designed again. We both sensed that if we didn’t explore this further, it could mean our garden designs not being used either, potentially calling into question our ability to satisfy not just our care sector clients, but their residents too. This was not an acceptable situation to us, either economically, or ethically.
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