Garden designers Debbie Carroll and Mark Rendell, from Step Change Design, carried out research to answer a simple question, ‘Why aren’t care home gardens used more actively?’ The answers they received had little to do with the design of the outside spaces
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 following the publication of our Care Culture Handbook and Map, is that we need to 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.
However, before we do so, here is 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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