A RHS Tatton Park show garden highlighting the impact of dementia on both patients and their families, is getting a peat free helping hand from Dalefoot Composts.
Designed by Jane Bingham and Penny Hearne of The Cheshire Garden, the ‘Remember Me’ Garden for Mid Cheshire Hospitals Charity, will be one of the feature exhibits at the show which runs from 19-23 July. Plants and containers in the charity garden will be planted using peat free Wool Compost and Lakeland Gold, donated by Dalefoot.
The garden will aim to create a ‘home from home’ outdoor space where people with dementia or a cognitive impairment can enjoy the freedom to be themselves. It will educate and inform visitors of the journey that someone with dementia takes, from first diagnosis through to potentially, 24-hour care.
Jane Bingham met Dalefoot Composts at the Landscape Show last year. “I’m grateful for the donation as the compost will help the plants establish themselves on the garden. We’ve received fantastic support from so many companies,” she said.
Show visitors will experience a memory shed called the ‘Room of Inklings’, created by RAW-i Studios, containing items in glass containers, such as sea shells, old seed packets, marbles and garden tools, designed to spark memories by representing the past and happy times during childhood. The planting will mirror the deterioration of the mind – at one side large colourful drifts with nods to the 1960s and 70s, with planting gradually becoming more faded and muddled, ending in a completely mixed up wildflower meadow.
The charity garden at RHS Tatton Park will support MCH Charity's new 'Everybody knows Somebody' Dementia Appeal which aims to raise £1.5 million to provide environmental enhancements to the wards and departments at Leighton Hospital caring for people with dementia or other cognitive impairment.