Gardening club launch at Sealand and Queensferry Dementia Café

A drop-in café in Garden City, Deeside, for people living with dementia and their carer, has started their own gardening club.

The Sealand and Queensferry Dementia Café meets on the last Monday of every month at St Andrews Hub, in a community partnership initiative has enabled the group to branch out and organise their own gardening club.

Clwyd Alyn Housing Association, who manage homes nearby supported the Café with £200 donation from their Charitable Donation fund and also put them in touch with Construction Partners Anwyl who ran an activity session making bird feeders, nesting boxes and planters to launch the new gardening club.

“The Anwyl Team were superb, they were joined by Ian Gibbons from IGJ Contractors and Huws Gray from Queensferry along with Anwyl kindly donated materials,” said Louise Blackwell, Community Development Officer at Clwyd Alyn, who thanked Natalie Palframan, Communications Co-ordinator at Anwyl for her help with all the arrangements and partners at Flintshire County for their support.

“The Café volunteers are an absolute inspiration. It was an absolute delight to join them for the morning and wish them well with their future gardening initiative,” added Louise.

Chris Owen, Assistant Site Manager of Maes Helyg Project in Garden City, who assisted with activities on the day, said “As part of our Thoughtful Building ethos we support a number of community initiatives and it was a privilege and pleasure to be involved with the Dementia Café

“It was wonderful to see how the café is helping improve the lives for people living with dementia and their carers, allowing them to feel involved in their local community, by feeling valued, and enabling friendships to be made,”

Joinery sub-contractor, Ian Gibbons from IGJ Contractors, added: “it was extremely rewarding to see how the members and their carers enjoyed the activity, enabling everyone to have a go and for some, re-igniting a passion for joinery work.”