Residents Discover Their Green Fingers At Colchester Care Service During Lockdown

Newlands, a registered care service for adults with physical and learning disabilities based in Colchester, has used the UK’s lockdown to grow a love for gardening among its residents.

The care home, which is based on Ipswich Road, regularly hosts activity days for residents and, throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, the service has been engaging in innovative and fun ways to keep service users busy and discover new hobbies.

As part of the new programme, the home has organised gardening days so that residents have been able to enjoy the fresh air and sunny weather as they took part in a number of gardening-themed tasks, such as planting flowers and decorating plant pots.

The gardening days proved to be extremely popular with residents and many have already expressed their new-found love of gardening.

Heather, one of the residents at Newlands, said: “It has been really fun to get out and experiment in the garden. I have definitely found a new hobby for life.

“I love all the different coloured flowers that we planted and I think they look great in the pots that we decorated. I can’t wait to see them when they begin to grow.”

Nicola Dolden, manager at Newlands, said: “Our residents really enjoyed the range of gardening activities that we put on throughout the days. The plant pot decorating proved to be really popular and was definitely a favourite amongst residents.

“The day could not have gone better; the weather was perfect and our residents had thoroughly enjoyed the day.”