Garden design


Putting down the pen: non-drawing design interventions


Designing gardens for care settings can be both challenging and highly rewarding, but how do we ensure that new outside spaces are still being used in the longer term? According to garden designers Debbie Carroll and Mark Rendell of Step Change Design, non-drawing design interventions might be the answer


One of the key findings from our research project Why don’t we go into the garden?1 in which we looked at why care home gardens were not being used more often, particularly by people living with dementia, was that designers need to match their services more closely to the currently observed care practices in operation at the setting in question. In other words, we concluded that we need to focus on the organisational culture to understand how we can best support a care setting client. Since we published our research in 2016, the finding that we need to support the care culture has at times been misunderstood. We have even been misquoted as saying design was not needed at all. This is not the case, but we do need to consider our role in new ways and provide our support differently within the context of a clear


Key findings


The three key findings in our research project2


into what makes care setting


gardens more actively used were: n There is a correlation between advanced care culture practices (i.e. relationship-centred care) and truly active engagement with the outside space, regardless of the condition, appearance or design of the space and the time of year.


n Fearful attitudes towards Health and Safety effectively cap engagement levels with the outdoors.


n The garden designer needs to match and support the current care culture of the care setting to avoid over- designing the space and to prevent investment in the new garden becoming a waste of money.


understanding of the care culture at play. We call this approach to working with care (and other institutional) settings, relationship-centred design.3 Our findings hint at a greater need for


flexibility in the range of interventions, both drawing and non-drawing, that the designer can support the care setting with, based on how they currently engage with the outside space. It also requires the designer to capture more data about the practices and routines at the setting, in addition to their more traditional site-based information gathering activities, at least initially. We produced a range of tools to help identify care culture practices for both designers and the care setting.2, 3


Supporting a culture change journey Why is our main role supporting the culture change journey of the setting? In our research observations, we noticed that as the care setting advances towards more person-centred and relationship- centred care practices, staff and residents naturally start to engage with their outside


February 2024 www.thecarehomeenvironment.com


space, regardless of how well-designed or attractive it is. This is because their day-to- day practices are driven by, and centred around, the people they care for and helping them continue to engage outside as and when they wish, doing things that are meaningful for them. In other words, our research findings


require us to help the setting advance their care culture practices in order for them to engage their residents more actively with their outside space. This is why we believe the designer working with a care setting shares the overall aim of the setting in focusing on how to help them engage more actively with their outside space to accrue the many health benefits from spending time there.


We argue that achieving that aim may


not always require garden design, and the creation of a new garden, at least in the initial stages of support. Instead, it may require us to help in a number of other, often very simple, ways, using both drawing and ‘non-drawing’ design interventions, matching our support to the care setting’s


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