Excelcare Residents Show Off their Gardening Skills for the Plantathon 2023!

Residents across the Excelcare Family took part in its very own annual gardening event dubbed the ‘Plantathon’ last month.

The Plantathon is a competitive gardening competition, which challenges residents and team members to spend the day renovating their outdoor space and getting their gardens ready for summer. The Plantathon also encourages residents to spend the day surrounded by nature, showing off their skills and learning some new ones too. This in turn has a positive effect on their wellbeing and the thought of being crowned a winner adds to the excitement of the day!

Each year, Excelcare’s Chief Operating Officer, Sam Manning sets a different theme, with the aim to challenge people’s skills in different ways. Lots of people living in Excelcare homes share a passion for gardening as it’s something they have done throughout their lives, so encouraging people to put their skills into practice helps to preserve their sense of identity and bring back some fond memories in the process.

This year, the theme was homegrown, so residents were challenged to create a vegetable patch and plant different fruits and vegetables within it, so when the crops have grown, they can be used by the kitchen team in home-cooked recipes. The second part of the challenge was to make the vegetable patch attractive and colourful, so it stands out in their green spaces.

COO Sam Manning then had the difficult task of choosing a winning home for the best vegetable patch creation. It was a tough decision, but she awarded first place to The Willows Care Home. There were many pictures of residents smiling and putting their all into the Plantathon, so this secured their first-place finish!

It was a really successful event and residents now look forward to watching their crops grow!