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LIFE BEYOND THE MILITARY – OUTDOORS
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Despite being the wettest February on record, it’s been exciting times at Stanford Hall.

February 29, 2020

We are preparing for our first Farm Shop as we now have a surplus of seedlings to sell including chillies, tomatoes and herbs. We have also started growing plants for our entry in the Gardeners World Live 2020 Beautiful Borders competition ‘Make Do & Mend’ and are gradually assembling materials which will be re-purposed to create some of the structures in the garden. You can follow our progress here.

Royal Visit

We were lucky to have been involved with the recent visit to the DMRC by members of the royal family. We met TRH The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. It gave us the opportunity to share some information about HighGround and the Horticultural Therapy service we deliver at Stanford Hall. Two of our Force Generation patients helped by demonstrating seed sowing and pricking out seedlings with the support of two of our Occupational Therapy staff.

Cleaning and Sharpening Garden Tools – Therapeutic benefits

Wintertime is a good time of year to maintain garden tools ready for use in the coming season and it proved to be a useful activity for patients in the Neuro group. All three patients have upper and lower limb weakness on one side of the body. We dismantled secateurs and loppers, used metal files to sharpen the blades, and cleaned blades with a wire brush/sandpaper before oiling and fitting back together. This task was unfamiliar and a good test of cognitive skills as well as fine and gross motor skills. It also proved to be of interest to one of the patients who used to enjoy car maintenance and was motivated to resume this activity.

Friends of the Tenth War Memorial

We recently visited the memorial with one of our patients to plant three trees in the garden adjacent to the memorial which we are in the process of developing. It was an opportunity to review the process for planting and staking a tree with our patient who is interested in arboriculture and will eventually produce a colourful display of leaves from Liquidambar styraciflua ‘Worplesdon’ and Acer ‘Crimson King’. You can follow our progress here.

 

Happy Gardening, Jane.

 

The Royal visit.

Friends of the Tenth War memorial, Somerby.

Tree planting at Friends of the Tenth with a patient and Andy.

Tool maintenance.