HC-One Cedar House Care Home in Harefield recently engaged with the National Citizen Service (NCS) on a project to enhance the garden at the Care Home.

NCS is a government backed scheme to engage with 15 - 17 year olds on their school holidays to get involved with a community project. NCS helps them develop in their life skills and provides them with opportunities for fun. The young people that sign up for NCS are asked to get involved in a Community Action Day and this is what they did for Cedar House Care Home.

From a planning meeting it was agreed the NCS project would produce raised planters in the garden for wheelchair bound residents in the Home who are still able to enjoy gardening. Having agreed to their task the young people with their project leader went away with the idea for raised planters and to also paint something colourful on the Home’s fence. The project group did some fundraising activities and purchased all the plants and paint for the project and also managed to get a further donation of plants from a local garden centre worth approximately £200.

The young people then returned to Cedar House Care Home to carry out their Community Action Day where they installed the raised planters, painted the fence in bright colours, planted lots of flowers, power washed and generally tidied the garden.

Wendy Blackmun, the Home Manager commented “The results of all the fundraising and hard work on the Community Action Day by the project team of local young people are fantastic and the garden is now a sensory place that the residents will most definitely enjoy. We have a sensory planter with herbs, lavender, and tomatoes, and thee flower planters. They also planted strawberries and various other plants in our larger pots. This has been an excellent example of how young people can connect with an older generation in their own community especially as Residents were able to chat to the young people and watch their garden being transformed”.

HC-One is also celebrating achieving a 9.4 average rating on the sector’s leading care home comparison website Carehome.co.uk. The high rating puts HC-One homes into the very best company in the care home sector, committed to providing kind care to Residents.

HC-One Chief Operating Officer Paula Keys commented “In all of our HC One Homes we are keen for residents to meet and interact with members of the local community so very pleased to hear about this project at Cedar House Care Home particularly in relation to the wonderful efforts of the young people and the results they achieved”