A joyous place: The dementia-friendly gardening group

Posted:7 January 2020

The city of Brighton & Hove has bid to become the UK’s first Gold Sustainable Food City.

Read their blog HERE – a series of posts celebrating the important work in our city that is helping to improve our food system and support people to access healthy, sustainable food. These are the stories that bring to life what a gold sustainable food city really looks like. To help inspire others please share on social media using #goldfoodcitybid any good food work that you’re involved with or that you see around the city.

Food Partnership volunteer, Jason Deans, visited our dementia friendly gardening group to hear about the impact of the group from participants and volunteers.  In this blog course leader Caroline highlights the group’s good fortune in meeting at the Garden House, a private garden on a quiet residential street that hosts an array of horticulture-related events.

Garden House owner Bridgette has developed the large former market garden at the rear of her home into a beautiful, multi-level outdoor space with an array of trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, bulbs and vegetables that change with the seasons.

Caroline noted “the Garden House has so much to offer in terms of what it brings in its richness and variety to our sessions… There’s a potential for awe and wonderment to be felt. We see and hear that being expressed in our participants every week, as they notice something new, some berries that have changed colour on a tree, or some fruit that they haven’t encountered for decades.