The contest, which launched in June, encourages both staff and residents to work together to embrace their love of the great outdoors by devising and implementing an exciting revamp for their outdoor spaces that everybody can enjoy during the summer months.
Ashworth Grange residents and staff joined forces to introduce a new fun and enjoyable garden masterpiece. The team and residents decided on the theme during their monthly resident's meeting, in which residents were able to put forward ideas for things they would like to be included in the final design.
Residents voted to create separate themes across the homes two gardens to keep things fun and interesting. One garden features a ‘seaside’ theme which includes lots of brightly coloured traditional red and white striped signs and beach games, wheelchair friendly sandpits, postcard writing station, a fully functional lighthouse and brightly painted boat and even their own mini-golf course!
Residents opted for a more ‘classic’ theme in the rear garden which featured a relaxing water fountain, various comfortable seating areas and beautiful flowerbeds to admire. Residents also created their own noughts and crosses game, using beautifully hand-painted ‘ladybird’ and ‘bee’ pebble playing pieces and a carved log baseboard.
Resident, Bill Atkinson, said, ‘I am so proud of how both of our garden areas turned out! We had so much fun creating such relaxing, yet fun spaces and we are already thinking of other ideas to add before the national judging!’
Home Manager, Paul Rowson, said, ‘We are absolutely thrilled to be crowned the regional West Yorkshire winner. All of the credit must go to our amazing residents who embraced the competition with such gusto. We are extremely grateful to have had such overwhelming support from our resident's families, our staff team and local businesses that generously donated to our garden project. It really has been a labour of love and we are so glad to see the judges were as thrilled with our garden creation as we are!’
Stacey Linn, Ideal Carehomes’ Director, said, ‘Our wonderful team and residents at Ashworth Grange should be very proud to be the West Yorkshire winner. Our judges were astonished at just how much effort and thought had clearly gone into their project and how much our resident's families and friends and the wider community rallied together to bring plans to life. We know that our residents take huge pride in their garden areas and we hope that this warm spell continues so that they can enjoy the fruits of their labour even more. I now look forward to visiting each of our regional winners as part of the judging panel and helping to crown our national winner in the coming weeks!’
The home now enters the final round of the competition, whereby Ideal Carehomes panel of judges will visit all regional winners in four weeks’ time to decide upon a national victor.