My home, my garden story: exploring how people living with dementia access and use their garden in everyday life

Context: Little is known about the role of gardens within the everyday lives of people with dementia who are living at home (1). The majority of research on dementia and gardens has taken place in care home or community settings. Previous research in these contexts shows the benefits of gardens for supporting wellbeing, social connections, identities and memories (2,3).

Yet research in care contexts also indicates a range of barriers to accessing gardens, including a disconnection between garden design and the experiences of people living with dementia, and staff concerns about 'risk' (4,5). Objectives: 1) To understand how people with dementia who are living at home access and use their gardens in their everyday lives.

2) To map how social relationships and the material environment shape practices of using gardens.

3) To follow the changing use of gardens over time in relation to the progression of dementia, changing seasons, and changing social relationships.

4) To create visual 'garden stories' that capture rich details of how people living with dementia experience and use their gardens.

5) To translate garden stories into materials that can inform practice, aiming to encourage dialogue between garden designers, health and social practitioners and people living with dementia.

The project builds on pilot research, and has been developed in consultation with people living with dementia, garden designers, and occupational therapists.

Methods: We will use creative methods to capture multi-sensory experiences of using gardens. This includes filmed interviews walking around the garden, observations, diaries and sketch methods, working with artist Lynne Chapman. We will offer a diversity of methods that can be adapted to suit the individual preferences and abilities of participants living with dementia (e.g. written, audio, photographic or film diaries, that can be completed alone or with a friend/family member).

The project will follow how people living with dementia use their gardens over one year, exploring changes related to the seasons, the progression of dementia, and changing social relationships. We will explore differences in garden practices according to socio-cultural factors (e.g. class, race and ethnicity) and cognitive factors (type and stage of dementia).

Potential applications and benefits: Drawing on data from the project, we will develop visual garden stories capturing how people living with dementia experience and use their gardens over the course of a year. These garden stories have potential to contribute to more positive images of living with dementia. Visual garden stories present findings in an accessible format suitable for different audiences, including: 1) cartoon strips illustrating year-long garden stories for selected households 2) short, animated films of garden stories.

We will work collaboratively with York Minds and Voices (a working group of people living with dementia) and our project advisory group to develop key messages and 'storylines'.

A better understanding of how, when and why people living with dementia use (or do not use) gardens has potential for supporting people to 'live well' at home. It may also help to develop garden designs that are better informed by the experiences of people living with dementia. Gathering personal stories is the starting point for person-centred design and practice (6).

Yet consultation with people living with dementia is often absent from the design process (5), and knowledge about how people living with dementia use their gardens can become lost during transitions to care services. Working with York Minds and Voices and our project advisory group, we will develop prompts and questions for designers to facilitate consultation with people living with dementia.

We will also develop questions for health and social care practitioners to ask during key points of transition (e.g. receiving support at home or moving into a care home).