Tuesday 15 November 2011

Sensory gardens for disabled children & their families

I was recently contacted by the mother of a young boy. He is 12 years old, wheelchair bound and gaining weight. His specialist advised the family to get a spa pool at home where he could do daily hydrotherapy.

A spa pool for hydrotherapy could be just that or it could become part of a wider opportunity to engage the senses. Water, especially when it is warm, has a relaxing quality we know from the childhood bathtime-before-bed routine. When we are realxed we feel more sociable, more creative and are more likely to open our other senses.

A spa pool may have been all the doctor prescribed but how much better if the occupational therapist, psychologist and others in the team had got together? If a spa pool can help mobility and combat weight gain, a deck around a pool can provide somewhere for friends and family to gather, to share jokes, to watch the clouds. When the deck's edges are planted with wildlife-friendly scented flowers and fruits, a fresh, tasty morsel can be added to the experience of hydrotherapy. When that deck is connected to a creative route through the garden, under light-blocking planting and out into bright sunshine, past rustling grasses and tinkling windchimes, the sensory garden is starting to fulfil its true potential.

The requirements of a disabled family member will necessarily take precedence in the design of a space. If you look to the wider needs of the family however, you can create something really special, an inclusive space that nutures the whole family. A sensory garden, well designed, will do just that. Greenstone Design UK are experts in creating sensory gardens for disabled children and their families.

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