how it all began, part 2

The light bulb moment!

If you haven’t seen part 1 yet, you can read it here.

In the first part of this story I told you a bit about myself and how I fell in love with all things floral. Today it’s time to get to the real reason that Roots & Bloom sprang to life!

As I was slowly rediscovering my love of gardening, my step-dad, Michael was struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. He was diagnosed aged 58 and it was a huge shock for us all. He was a builder all his life and ran his own company with his son, so he was used to being busy and working hard. As his illness progressed he had to give up the work he loved, and soon became bored and frustrated with being at home more than usual. We started to look around for activity groups that he would enjoy but soon discovered that most of them were geared towards much older and less active people.

There’s some great work going on around dementia in Sheffield, and we encouraged Michael to try some of the things on offer. The feedback was not good! “It’s boring, I don’t want to paint and write poems.” and “These groups are full of old people, I’m not going back!” were words we heard from him very often! Before too long he refused to go to any more sessions, and I could see why.

Singing, crafts, and games groups are great for some people, but not for a 60 year old builder! He was so young and most of the other people in the groups were 10, 20, sometimes 30 years older than him. He felt like he didn’t fit in and had no interest in the activities on offer. He wanted to be outside, doing the manual labour that he’d always been used to. He wanted to feel useful, and like he could still do something worthwhile!

The lack of age appropriate groups soon took its toll on my mum as well as Michael, as it was now her sole responsibility to be his carer and entertainer. Their home life suffered immensely and things became very fraught. The lack of support for younger people definitely contributed to this, and we were desperately searching for something that would interest Michael. He would light up when he was in the garden, and really loved being outside, building things or just pottering about. I realised there must be other families in the same position as us, struggling with the same issues that we were facing, and suddenly, two parts of my life collided and Boom!…. Roots & Bloom was born!

Combining my love of growing and the obvious gap in dementia services seemed like a perfect solution. So I set to work developing a plan. 10 months later, our first flowers are blooming and we’re really close to securing a much bigger plot of land! When we move, we’re going to set up flower farming sessions where people under 65 who are living with dementia can come to work alongside us to grow, harvest and arrange our flowers so they can be sold right across Sheffield. We want to create a place where people can escape from the stresses of every day life, find friendship and support, and most importantly, be part of something meaningful!

Working with nature is a great way to support people who have young onset dementia because it provides a whole host of benefits! There’s a certain peace to be found in a garden, and tending to plants brings about a calmness that’s hard to find elsewhere. The physical jobs like building beds and turning compost heaps keep people fit and healthy, and the satisfaction that comes from seeing the fruits (or flowers!) of all that hard work is great for instilling a sense of satisfaction and well being.

Because we’re a social enterprise, all our profits go back into helping people who are living with dementia in Sheffield, so our bouquets not only help care for the environment, but for your community too. Every time you buy a bouquet, you’re directly helping to support people in need by enabling us to set up and run our flower farming sessions! We’ve got big plans for the future too. Bringing people together is at the heart of what we do and we’re hoping that Roots & Bloom will become a real asset, not only to families who are living with dementia, but to the whole community!

Stop by next week to learn how you can do your bit for the environment by choosing our sustainably produced, locally grown flowers!

If you’d like to be notified when we start running the flower farming sessions, you can sign up here.