The Tasmanian garden helping people with dementia live well

Peter Maloney lives with dementia, but in recent times he has felt a positive change in himself.

"I suppose rather than focusing on what's gone, my mind has shifted to what's there," Mr Maloney said.

Mr Maloney is a participant and volunteer in a gardening program catered towards people with dementia and their care partners, aimed at improving their quality of life through nature-based activities.

With help from his wife, Madeleine Maloney, he spends several hours each week at the Chigwell Community Garden in Hobart's northern suburbs.

Along with a handful of other participants and a small team of volunteers, he engages in gentle gardening, which he said has given him greater appreciation for aspects of life he had paid less attention to in the past.

The program is one of several dementia-inclusive outdoor spaces across the state helping participants reap the physical and mental health benefits of spending time in nature.

Ms Maloney said she has also noticed the change in her husband.

"We always loved nature, but this has just galvanised something else," she said.

"He's expanded whatever he's got inside, he hasn't diminished at all. He's just noticing more things and he's happy, really content."

Push for dementia-inclusive spaces

The program is run by the University of Tasmania's (UTAS) Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre, and funded by Primary Health Tasmania as part of the Venture Out Living Lab project.

The Chigwell Community Garden program, co-designed and run by Conservation Volunteers Australia, is one of four "labs" across the state's south.

The Chigwell site is the only lab to run a dedicated dementia gardening program.

The others — at the Tasmanian Bushland Garden, Derwent Valley Community Garden, and Warrane Community Garden — offer several dementia-inclusive activities such as self-guided walks and nature-based art groups.

A fifth lab is being built at UTAS's Sandy Bay campus.

The project's lead, senior lecturer and health geographer, Pauline Marsh, said the program was developed with the ambition of making outdoor spaces more dementia-friendly.

"It's a fairly unique program and we are sort of leading the way at UTAS with this type of research and community program combined,"

Dr Marsh said.

"We're looking at aspects of dementia, we're looking at aspects of community development, and the therapeutic nature of environment."

What that means will be different for each participant.

It may be gardening, walking among the garden beds, or simply sitting and watching birds.

For Mr Maloney, the program is about "appreciating the simplicity of nature being everywhere".

"Even looking out beyond the garden, there's birds, there's a few trees, there's clouds,  just incredible. Every cloud is unique."

"What I've learned is to appreciate what's available, I suppose, to really be grateful for it."

Ms Maloney said it has also helped disperse some of the anxiety she and Mr Maloney experienced about the neurodegenerative condition.

"Dementia can be a really bleak subject in the community; people seem to be really fearful of it," Ms Maloney said.

"We probably were too at the beginning, but we're certainly not now."

Research to underpin program

The program's overarching aim is to conduct research that ultimately helps people living with dementia to live well, Wicking Dementia Centre researcher and clinical psychologist Cassandra Thomson said.

Dr Thomson said a dementia diagnosis can often lead to an individual spending more time indoors, or in their own interior world.

But, depending on the stage of an individual's journey with dementia, Dr Thomson said the opposite is often needed to restore the basic human needs that can be gradually whittled away.

"The outdoors offers that," she said.

"You're getting purpose, a sense of mastery, that opportunity to socialise in a really low-pressure way."

And then there are the well-documented benefits of spending time in nature, like lower stress levels and higher feelings of contentment.

Dr Marsh said the team's research had revealed another surprising outcome: the capacity for some people with dementia to develop a deeper, more meaningful connection with nature than before their diagnosis.

"It's really affirming that this is a beneficial thing for people," Dr Marsh said.

"But also there's a tension and disappointment for us that there remain so many barriers for people who live with dementia to get outdoors."

Conservation Volunteers Australia general manager of program delivery, Renae Riviere, said the lab at Chigwell Community Gardens is funded until June 2027.

Ms Riviere said if the program could demonstrate benefits to those living with dementia, she hoped funding would be renewed to run similar programs at other sites.