Transforming gardens to support people with dementia

A pioneering project to support people with dementia by transforming outdoor spaces at 30 care homes across the UK launches today thanks to a £1.3 million grant from the Big Lottery Fund.

National charity Learning Through Landscapes will work with residents and staff to make gardens and outdoor settings more suitable, stimulating, accessible and more like familiar natural environments people have experienced in the past.

This will encourage people to use the spaces more often and improve their health and wellbeing.

Around a third of the 800,000 people in the UK with dementia live in a care home. Many of these had significant experience of the outdoors either through work or in their own leisure time, which is now lost as a result of the restrictions dementia brings.

The 30 venues will be selected to ensure a variety of gardens with a range of features are included.

The first ten locations to be announced are:

Craigbank Care Home (Bupa), Saracen Street, Glasgow.
Three Cliffs Care Home, Cefn Bryn Lane, Penmaen, South Gower, Swansea.
Age NI Meadowbank, Donaghaine Rd, Omagh.
Age UK West Sussex, Town Barn Road, Crawley, West Sussex.
The Dales Care Home, Main St, Ellenborough, Maryport, Cumbria.
Age UK Maidstone, The Goodman Centre, Egremont Road, Maidstone, Kent.
Age UK Manchester, Holmfield Residential Care Home, Darley Avenue, Manchester.
Edith Moffat House, Albion Road, North Shields, Tyne and Wear.
Cedar Grove Wellbeing Centre, Cedar Grove, Wallsend, Tyne and Wear.
Evesham Community Hospital, Waterside, Evesham, Worcestershire.

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