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Growing Things: Gardens and Gardening as Therapy for Alzheimer's Patients

© Brenda S. Parris

Gardens and gardening can be excellent therapy for Alzheimer's patients and can offer caregivers respite as well. The senses are stimulated by getting out in the fresh air and sunshine, seeing colors and smelling scents, hearing birds sing and leaves blow in the breeze, and touching plants and soil. It also may help to keep the patient more in touch with the real world and with the present as well as the past. "Talking about growth, and the cycle of life, keeping those with Alzheimer's involved in the world around them, and making links with what has happened in the past. In dementia, the long strings of brain cells we normally use are shortened as individual cells die. One key aim of therapy is to put those links back in, and multi-sensory therapy using gardens is one way of doing that. Gardens can also help to keep those with Alzheimer's more in touch with the 'real world', rather than the sometimes disconnected world of their own imaginations." [1]

People who are unable to do other things may still be able to participate in gardening activities. One professional caregiver said of garden therapy: "A woman who can barely remember how to feed her herself, but one day she came out here and potted plants ... It was remarkable. Perhaps it was feeling the soil which unlocked some memory for her".[2]

In the earlier stages, the patient can participate in gardening as well as enjoying the environment. In the later stages, simply enjoying the garden may be enough. "A rehabilitative approach using behavioural strategies and environmental modifications can improve physical and mental functions of people with dementia, often allowing them to perform at their highest ability. Optimal functioning and esteem-building need to become the goals of rehabilitation intervention for patients with early-stage dementia; sensory stimulation, awareness outside of self, and bringing pleasure to the patient should become the goals of late stage dementia intervention." [3]

A study of the effects of gardens in nursing homes provided the following interesting data: "At nursing homes without gardens there was a rise in the number of incidents in two consecutive years as the condition of the residents deteriorated, whilst at the homes with gardens instances of violence and falls actually fell slightly. In the garden institutions, the rate of violent incidents declined by 19% between 1989 and 1990 while the total rate of incidents fell by 3.5% over the same period. In the non-garden institutions, the rate of violent indents increased by 681% and the total rate of incidents increased by 319%." [4]

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