From a seminar on how to look after elderly living in the secluded areas, from the papers, translated…
There is a “healing garden” somewhere in Hong Kong, especially for the demented elderly or elderly who’d become incapacitated. An elderly woman who once had a stroke, Liu, used her slightly trembling hands, and set up the bouquets; Mr. Jiang who was innately shy, also went from a plant murderer to a green thumb, and named the doll he’d grown “baby”. Their smiles were due to the very first registered gardening therapist, Feng.
Seven years ago, Feng had once invited nine elderly who were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s ages seventy-five to ninety-five to enter into the six-week long, six lesson gardening therapy program, the contents of the course included planting the flowers, cultivating the plants, and making the floral baskets to carry the flowers in. And, during the process of this therapeutic program, it’d accidentally recalled the elderly’s lost memories from long ago.
“I’d planted roses before, because my daughter’s name is also ‘Rose’………I also remembered a song, called ‘The Last Rose’ too.” Feng described what an elderly woman told her, along with an elderly man who, in the process of cultivating the plants, he saw how strong the plants were, how they’d survived, stated, “I too, will be strong”.
Feng said, that gardening therapy is a therapy that looks after the mind, the body, and helps with the social skills, an include-all kind of therapeutic program for demented elderly. She’d designed the handicapable garden for demented elderly “Forever Green Gardens”, with the flower racks, a guided passage for walks, it’s a place where the elderly can socialize with each other, to dine together, to play with their offspring.
“The flowers in bloom makes people happy, the plants that withered helped us understand life.” Feng said, that gardening therapy is a magical potion that helped the elderly become younger again.
In recent years, the gardening therapy programs made their ways into Taiwan as well. The manager of the Taipei One Grain Foundation, Liu said, garden therapy is more than just finding a space to plant the seeds, the racks setting up, the potted plants, how they’re set up, these are skills that should be learned, “A seed fell to the ground, and we’d needed to be watchful, that the elderly may trip on it and fall”, there’s even a course offered on de-weeding.
And so, through getting in touch with nature, it’d helped these demented elderly get the sources of life back again. And, this is an important discovery, because we can’t slow down the progressions of dementia or cure it, we must work hard, to make the elderly who were diagnosed feel better about themselves, to make their lives more meaningful to them too, and, this program does more than that.