GARDENS AND OUTDOOR SPACES IN AGED CARE: HOW REGENTS GARDEN'S GROUNDS SUPPORT WELLBEING

A garden is not a treatment, and it is not the same at every home. Families ask about outdoor spaces because a parent who has lived with a yard, a dog, or a short walk to the shops will feel a locked courtyard as a loss. The useful question is what you can actually walk, sit in, and return to, at the residence you are considering.

We do not claim that a landscaped path will lift mood, slow a disease, or replace company. We can show you what is outside the door at each home, and you can judge whether that ground is somewhere your parents would sit with you on an ordinary afternoon.

Go outside on the tour. A lounge can be dressed for a visit. A path, a pond, and a seat in the weather cannot hide what they are. If it is too hot, too exposed, or too far from the room, you will know in ten minutes.

This is about the grounds at our residences, named one home at a time. It is not a promise that every building has the same garden.

WHAT EACH HOME ACTUALLY HAS

Scarborough

Scarborough has a fishpond and landscaped garden areas, with a herb garden and a vegetable patch. It also has original artwork, sculptures, and a roof-top piano lounge. If the person you love wants something to look at and a reason to go outside, ask to be taken to the fishpond, not only to the lounge. A herb garden is a small working patch, not a park.

Booragoon

Booragoon has a conservatory with waterfalls, a landscaped garden, a boulevard, and promenades. That is a different walk from a vegetable patch. If your parents tires quickly, ask how far the promenade is from the rooms they would actually use. A long pretty path is useless if they cannot reach the start of it without help you have not arranged.

Bateman

Bateman has landscaped garden areas, a herb garden, and a vegetable patch, plus protected gardens and sunny outdoor areas where residents can sit in the weather or have family with them. Ask which seats are shaded at the hour you usually visit. A sunny court at noon in January is not a place most people will stay.

Aubin Grove

Aubin Grove has walkways among landscaped gardens, and koi ponds, along with lounges, artwork, and sculptures. Walk one of those paths and see whether a person with a frame can use it, or whether it is only pleasant to look at from a window. A path that looks level in a photo can still be the wrong surface after rain.

Lake Joondalup

Lake Joondalup has 54 terrace homes in three garden neighbourhoods, and internal and external gardens with walkways. That is a different layout from a single courtyard. Ask which neighbourhood the room sits in, and whether the walkway between them is part of an ordinary day or only a view.

HOW TO JUDGE A GROUND IN ONE VISIT

Sit down outside. If there is nowhere to sit near the door, the garden is a view, not a place. Notice the noise, the step, the handhold, and whether you would leave a parent there alone for twenty minutes. Wellbeing, in this talk, means they can be outside with you without a production. It does not mean the garden will change their health.

The notes under making your choice still apply. Visit more than once, at different times. A garden at 10am and the same garden at 4pm are not the same place. Ask whether family will be made welcome if you want to sit outside rather than in a meeting room.

Aged care residences cover these five homes. Do not let a photo of the Booragoon conservatory stand in for Scarborough, or the other way around. Write the suburb at the top of your notes.

DO NOT MIX THIS WITH A BUNGALOW

Retirement living at Aubin Grove and Lake Joondalup is a bungalow life, with a different front door from a care room. If the person wants their own patch of ground more than they want daily care, say that before you judge a residence garden. The two walks answer different questions.

Regents Garden is the name of both. The ground you are standing on is the one that counts. A terrace neighbourhood at Lake Joondalup does not tell you what the fishpond at Scarborough is like on a windy day.

PEOPLE, FEES, AND WHAT THE GARDEN IS NOT

Our team is who will walk someone outside when you are not there. Registered nurses are on the residential floor around the clock. A garden does not replace that. Ask who takes a resident out when the family is at work, and ask it of the people on the floor, not only of the person giving the tour.

Our ethos should show up in whether someone is left in the sun, spoken over, or helped to a seat. You can see that in one afternoon. You cannot see it in a paragraph on a page.

Extra lifestyle choices, including dining for members, sit with Regents Garden Club. They are not the garden. A vegetable patch is not a dining programme, and a dining programme is not a reason to skip the walk outside.

If the grounds are part of why you would choose the home, read fees and charges before you treat the garden as included in a number you have not seen. The Government funds most care payments. Daily living is a separate household share. Do not guess that a pleasant court changes the fee.

A parent who needs help with a shower may still want the fishpond. That help sits with 5-star services. The garden does not remove the help, and the fishpond does not remove it either.

Go outside with the person if they come, even for five minutes. A garden you liked and a garden they will not sit in are different facts. Notice the step at the door, the seat, and whether you needed to hold an arm. If they will not go out, do not narrate the garden as if they had been there. Tell them what you sat on, and ask if they want to try it on a cooler morning.

Perth heat changes the ground. A court that is pleasant at 9am can be empty at 1pm. Ask which seats have shade, and ask it for the month you are visiting, not for a brochure photo taken in another season. Wind off the coast at Scarborough is not the same as a sheltered court at Bateman. Write the weather in your notes or you will misremember the place.

If the seat outside is wet, broken, or facing a blank wall, say so before you leave. A garden that only works in a photograph is not a place your parent will use. Ask for a seat you would actually leave them in for ten minutes, and look at the step on the way back in.

Write the suburb on the note before you start the car. A mixed memory of two gardens is how the wrong home gets chosen. The fishpond and the conservatory are not interchangeable.

Book a tour that includes ten minutes outside, at the home you would actually drive to. Contact us and name the suburb you want to walk.