The Design of a Dementia Care Garden: Goodwin House, Ainslie ACT.

The population is ageing. As Landscape Architects many of us are involved in the design of new aged care facilities from low care environments to very high care such as dementia care facilities.  dsb Landscape Architects has completed the construction of a new garden devoted to the care of dementia residents at Goodwin House Ainslie, Canberra.

Research for this project included a visit to Adards Nursing Home, Hobart, Tasmania, a pioneering home for dementia care sufferers. The ideas and design solutions we took from this research, and further reading were combined to create two gardens that would address client needs; to enable the continuation of daily activities of residents in an attractive, safe, secure, stimulating and happy environment and therefore reduce the need for medications or restraints.

The key principle conveyed to me by Allan Bester, then Director of Nursing during my visit to Adards was to ‘design to treat residents as normal and fully functioning people’. If you design a padded cell they will panic and try to get out. This is normal behavior for anyone. Design a comfortable living environment and they will be happier and will not wish to leave. Within this principle we still need to consider security and safety. However, there are design solutions that still create a ‘normal’ living space but help to minimise activities that are unsafe and encourage desired activities.

For example, at Adards the gardens around each of the four ‘wings’ are divided by a wooden fence. Some residents do try and climb this.  To minimise this activity the horizontal timbers were cut at an angle removing a ‘foothold’ which helps to prevent climbing. It was these simple but clever design ideas that I took away with me and resolved to incorporate into the new gardens at Goodwin House.

The linked article outlines design ideas specifically for dementia care gardens; however, many can also be applied to the design of nursing home landscapes in general. 

Alex Stevenson AILA

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