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Charlie’s sketch of the garden design with the colour highlighted edges visible on two of the shelters

In the fourth of his blog series in the lead-up to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, Charlie Hawkes talks about how and why he incorporated water features and hard landscaping into his design. 

Each person’s dementia is unique to them and knowing exactly how each sense or cognitive function has been impacted is difficult. I’ve therefore introduced design elements that affect as many senses as possible in the hope that one of those sensory inputs will have a positive impact. So, as well as all the visual input and the scent from some plants, I’ve introduced sound via three small water features. The sound of running water can be very transformative and has a potent impact on the atmosphere of a place. It’s a way of making the space inside a garden feel different to outside and of creating a variation in mood. So, visitors will walk through an audio threshold of water and when they move past that, they should feel a shift.  

However, I learned from speaking to people who live with visual dementias that reflectivity and glare can be problematic, so I wanted to find a way to introduce the sound of water without visitors necessarily seeing it. I didn’t, for example, want a big reflective pool or large surface of water, because if the sun hits that and the water is rippling, it’ll create a wobbling effect in the reflections of the trees and the hedging that could be disorientating. So, the water features will be mostly hidden in the planting. 

Miniature havens 

The benches and shelters have been designed to have a consistent visual language that is easy to understand and follow but each one will have a unique colour-highlighted edge to help differentiate it and reflect the varying level of openness within and around the different seating areas. For first-time visitors these coloured edges (pink, turquoise and yellow) will help signal movement through the garden and assist with orientation. When the garden moves to its long-term home after Chelsea, the edges will help repeat visitors to identify and return to their favourite place in the garden, increasing their sense of independence and their ability to make a choice that reflects their needs, the kind of dementia they live with, and their mood on a particular day. I hope, as they start to familiarise themselves with the garden, they will think: “I can see a slither of bright pink and I can get there. I know that one and I know it’s a place I’ll feel safe.” 

For some people with a visual dementia, having your periphery filled with a lot of visual information can also be quite overwhelming, so one of the shelters is designed to reduce the visual field slightly on one side an almost blinkered effect. This will heighten a sense of privacy and offer calm amid the slight chaos of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

 

The sound of running water can be very transformative and has a potent impact on the atmosphere of a place. It’s a way of making the space inside a garden feel different to outside and of creating a variation in mood. So, visitors will walk through an audio threshold of water and when they move past that, they should feel a shift.  .”

 

Next time:
In his May blog, Charlie will giving a final pre-show update as the pace ramps up and last-minute preparations are made