Ideal Carehomes Launches its Annual Gardens in Bloom Competition

Care provider Ideal Carehomes, which operates Elworth Grange in Sandbach, has launched its annual ‘Gardens in Bloom’ competition across its Yorkshire, North West and Midlands care homes.

The contest 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.

Each year, the garden transformations are a real community effort, with the homes partnering with local garden centres, businesses and schools who generously donate flowers, paints, gardening tools and decorations to help create the wonderful displays and impressive garden features.

Last year, De Brook Lodge care home, based in Manchester, took home the crown following their impressive garden overhaul which included new outdoor seating areas for the residents to enjoy, newly installed flowerbeds with handmade decorated planters and hanging baskets. The residents also added a vegetable patch and special ‘fairy garden’ for younger visitors to enjoy.

This year, each of the homes have been fiercely competitive as they begin to implement their creative ideas into their gardens!

85 year-old, Newfield Lodge resident, Phillip Scott, said, ‘We have already started on our garden display and I am very pleased with how it is coming along. I love to be outside doing a spot of gardening with the team and the lovely weather we are having is making all the more enjoyable!’.

The competition judges are made up of Ideal Carehomes Directors, who will select regional winners before crowning the overall national winner.

Danielle Aikenhead, Lifestyle Manager at last year’s winning home,  De Brook Lodge, said, ‘We were absolutely thrilled to be the competition winners in 2019 – all of the credit must go to our amazing residents who embraced the competition with such gusto’.

‘We are extremely excited for our project this year; we have lots of tricks up our sleeve to impress the judges with! We have already received such overwhelming support from so many local businesses, and we look forward to showing off the final result soon’.

Ideal Carehomes Director, Stacey Linn, said, ‘The competition throughout summer 2019 was enjoyed by everyone and it really was wonderful to see the relationships built and nurtured when residents and staff worked together to create an outdoor masterpiece. I thoroughly enjoyed my visits to the finalist homes last year and was blown away by their efforts – I can’t wait to see all of this year’s displays and if De Brook Lodge are able to retain their winning status or if they will pass the baton to a different home!’.

Ideal Carehomes provides 24 hour residential and dementia care in newly built state-of-the-art homes across Yorkshire, the North West and the Midlands For more information about Ideal Carehomes, contact the customer care team on 0113 385 3800 or click here.

Pictured -  Resident, Brenda Topping is enjoying creating the homes display.