In our "The Box is Ticked" article, we talk about the importance of drawing on a person’s past interests to engage the person, even if they can no longer do the activity. In this article, we talk about gardening for someone with Alzheimer's or dementia.
Many caregivers think that the best, or only way to capitalize on a person’s interest in gardening is to get out the gardening tools, seeds and fertilizer and start planting. In fact, there are a lot of better ways to use someone’s interest in gardening to engage them in meaningful activity. After all, the goal is not to have a beautiful or bountiful garden, it is to engage the person with dementia in an enjoyable and meaningful way.
Gardening is a big topic that means many different things to different people. Some people view gardening as growing vegetables, others view it as landscaping and others perhaps as a necessary but enjoyable task.
Start by asking questions to determine what aspect of gardening was of particular interest. If the person themselves can answer, that’s great, if not, talk to family members.
TYPES OF QUESTIONS TO ASK:
- Was the person interested in the lawn, trees, gardens, growing vegetables, potted plants or something else?
- Did they enjoy looking at the plants, harvesting food from them, enjoying them in the house, or something else?
- What was their goal? Was it for pride in having the most attractive, most bountiful or nicest blossoms or was it more practical such as putting food on the table, or something else?
Once you understand what pleasure they got from their gardening, you can think of activities to provide the same pleasure in an achievable way. Here are two detailed examples…
Example 1: The person with dementia enjoyed plants to look at as a hobby. They had a particular interest in tea roses.
General
- Have a miniature potted rose in the house, or in their room in a facility
- Have a rose planted outside in a place they can enjoy checking on it
- Post a photo of a rose blossom and/or a rose garden for them to enjoy
Opportunities for Conversation
- Start a conversation by describing a rose garden you saw the other day and follow their lead with where the conversation goes
- Ask for their suggestions regarding the care of a rose plant ie. bugs, watering, fertilizer, pruning
- Sit with them and look in a picture book on roses, or the section of a gardening book on roses and talk about what you see
- Look together at a gardening catalogue to plan a purchase for “next” year or for someone else’s garden
- Walk around outside with them to scout out a potential location in the garden for a rose plant and talk about why it would be good
- Bring in some roses from the garden and talk about the color, scent, appearance, thorns etc. and encourage them to tell you their favorite (write this down and use this information in future interactions)
Opportunities for Activities
- Give the person a line drawing of a rose to color
- Have the person make a collage using a catalog with pictures of roses
- Make paper roses with the person
- Have the person decorate something with images of roses
- Collect some rose plant tags (or scan both sides of some tags, enlarge and print them out) and have the person sort through them by color or other characteristics
- Make up a list of songs that include roses, then sing them together or play a recording
- Make up a list of expressions that include roses (bed of roses, rose by any other name, rose colored glasses, roses are red, smell the roses…), then read them to the person leaving one word out and see if they can fill it in (similar to our "Expressions Game")
- Create a "Match the Photo", "Strip Puzzle" or other activities with pictures of roses for the person to do
- Create a word search or crossword with words related to caring for roses for the person to do
Example 2: The person with dementia enjoyed plants to eat or harvest for practical purposes
General
- Offer “homemade” relishes, jams, pickles when appropriate
- Give them a plant to nurture eg. an herb such as parsley
- Grow cherry tomatoes (which are small and relatively easy to grow) in a raised bed garden outside
Opportunities for Conversation
- Start a conversation by describing a vegetable garden you saw the other day or talk about crops growing in farmer’s fields and follow their lead with where the conversation goes
- Ask for their suggestions regarding the care of a vegetable plant ie. bugs, watering, fertilizer, harvesting
- Bring in some fresh produce and talk about the color, scent, appearance, etc. and encourage them to talk about their favorite vegetables or fruit and what they would make with them (write it down and use this information in future interactions)
- Sit with them and look in a picture book, or the section of gardening book on vegetables
- Look together at a book or magazine about preserving vegetables and fruit and talk about the recipes
- Browse a gardening catalog together to plan a purchase for “next” year- or for someone else’s garden
- Walk around outside with them to scout out a potential location for a garden and talk about why it would be good
Opportunities for Activities
- Collect some seed packages (or scan both sides of some packages, enlarge the image and print them out), then have the person sort them based on different characteristics - where they grow, how they grow ( in the ground like potatoes, on a vine, picked from the plant), when they are harvested, what you do with them etc.
- Make a book of recipes of things that the person used to make – preserves, jams, hodge podge, etc. The recipes don’t have to accurate, just have fun doing it
- Make up a list of songs that include harvest, then sing them together or play a recording
- Make up a list of expressions that are related to gardening (first full moon in May, reap what you sow, not worth a hill of beans) , then read them to the person leaving one word out and see if they can fill it in (similar to our "Expressions Game")
- Create a list of jokes related to gardening (What vegetable did Noah not take on the ark? Leeks. How can you tell a chili bean from a regular bean? The chilly one wears a shawl. Why is it not wise to tell secrets in a cornfield? There are too many ears.). Encourage them to share the jokes with other people
- Create a "Match the Photo", "Strip Puzzle" with pictures of gardens, vegetables for the person to do - create a word search or crossword with words related to caring for vegetable garden and making preserves for the person to do
Here are two other examples that you can expand on…
Example 3: The person enjoyed maintaining the lawn, general upkeep around the yard
If the person enjoyed the outdoors and puttering around, they would have spent their time trimming the hedge, edging the driveway/walkway and mowing. They might now enjoy watering the garden or plants inside and dead heading the flowers, removing the weeds or picking the tomatoes. Find a purpose for them to be outside – it could be as simple as checking on the level of bird seed in the feeder outside.
Example 4: The person enjoyed flowering, decorative plants to look at and maintain
If the person was interested in flower gardens to beautify their home, there are many possibilities in addition to the suggestions made in the previous example. In addition to simply walking through the garden and commenting on all the beautiful plants, they may enjoy looking through catalog to choose plants for shade versus full sunlight, annuals versus perennials, plants of a certain color, plants that bloom at different times, plants that attract birds etc. and laying them out in an imaginary garden. Another potential activity is arranging flowers – even artificial flowers for tables in the dining room.