The organisation provides supported sheltered accommodation for older people across Belfast and offers one and two-bedroom apartments within their purpose-built communities. The garden project at Bell Rotary House focused on the creation of an appropriate and suitable sensory garden to improve residents’ lives and offer more accessible ways to get back to nature for them, their families and visitors. “It was to entice the residents out into the garden,” says Niki Molloy, chief executive of Abbeyfield Belfast.
“Initially, it was literally just a lawn with a narrow path going around it. So it meant if a resident met another on the path that they couldn’t have anybody sitting out and they couldn’t get past. “It’s such a lovely space and we wanted to do something special with it to entice the residents out and then obviously with Anita’s design, once they’re enticed out, that they want to stay out, and that there are various areas then that they can walk around and sit and relax and reflect.
” Landscape designer Anita Houston is working on the project in association with Beechill Landscapes. She tells Belfast Telegraph that her aim with her design was to ensure residents did not think it a ‘boring’ garden. “Gardens can open up spaces for your mind, calmness, get you out in the open air and the exercise because as we get older, we don’t use what we used to when we were 20 or 30,” she says.
“The whole ethos of this garden was that it would have a co.
