Greater Manchester care home Brinnington Hall has been crowned the North West Regional Winner of Ideal Carehomes’ annual ‘Gardens in Bloom’ competition, thanks to the creation of a four-hole crazy golf course.
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.
Residents and staff introduced a new ‘Golf’ theme for this year’s garden masterpiece, decided on during their monthly committee meeting.
They all agreed to create a fun space with lots of activities and things to do and see. The team created a wooden crazy golf course with brightly coloured handmade obstacles including windmills, castles and towers for residents to enjoy. Since unveiling the course, residents have created small golf tournaments and regularly compete to achieve the best par per hole!
In other areas of the garden, miniature-themed gardens have been created including a ‘fairy garden’ featuring mini fairy houses, a ‘bug garden’ to attract new wildlife, bee hotels and a ‘rainbow garden’ to pay homage to the key workers’ rainbow symbol that has united the community during the coronavirus pandemic. Residents wrote messages on rainbow-painted wooden spoons, which now sit amongst the flowers to display their messages of appreciation, hope and love to the key workers.
One resident, 84-year-old Reginald MacNeill, said: “I am so proud of how the 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 winner judging!”
Home Manager, Rachel McIntosh, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to be crowned the regional North West 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 residents’ 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!”
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.
Brinnington Hall, operated by Ideal Carehomes, is a residential care home based in Stockport. Residents can enjoy a full programme of health, leisure and wellbeing activities managed by a dedicated team of carers.
