Most Wednesdays, a far corner of the San Antonio Botanical Garden thrums with activity. Fingers dig into soil, hands grasp tools and watering cans, feet and wheels ply mulched garden paths.

The fingers, hands, feet and wheels belong to people with dementia and their caregivers, engaged in a weekly Dementia-Friendly Gardening Workshop intended to promote health and well-being. Christina Bittle started the workshop last year for her capstone project as a doctor of occupational therapy student at UT Health San Antonio.

Mable Goldsmith and her husband, Eric, joined the workshop last year. Both had been gardening together for decades, he having grown up on a farm property near Rolling Oaks Mall. She enthusiastically joined in when they married. 

Eric Goldsmith now lives with Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease, which has severely limited his movement and dexterity. The workshop is held in the botanical garden’s Children’s Vegetable Garden, which includes several wheelchair-accessible raised garden beds that he can easily work with.

“We’ve always liked to be outdoors and harvesting and planting. And so it was just perfect for us to come out here,” Mable Goldsmith said.

Mable and Eric Goldsmith by the raised beds in their home garden. Eric’s son built the wheelchair-accessible raised beds based on the design of the raised beds in the Children’s Vegetable Garden.
Mable and Eric Goldsmith by the raised beds in their home garden. Eric Goldsmith’s son built wheelchair-accessible raised beds based on the design of the raised beds in the Children’s Vegetable Garden at the San Antonio Botanical Garden. Credit: Brenda Bazán / San Antonio Report

Immersed in nature

Cognitive impairment and other facets of dementia can be taxing on caregivers, so the workshop is designed to fully integrate them into gardening activities along with the people they care for. 

“It’s a moment for both to come out and be immersed in nature,” said Kate Griffin, who handles adult programming for the botanical garden and manages the workshop along with Bittle. 

Griffin said the workshop offers nature therapy, garden therapy and respite care — essentially giving caregivers a healthy, engaged break among other community members — “as well as just an opportunity to learn and get their hands in the dirt.”

Master gardeners are on hand to help as workshop participants identify weeds to pull from garden beds, transplant sprouting vegetables from plant trays into the raised and ground-level beds, water cauliflower, broccoli, swiss chard and tomatoes, and handle garden trowels, spading forks and other tools. 

Kathy Valentine worked as a master gardener and landscape designer in Virginia before being relocated to San Antonio after a breast cancer diagnosis at age 74. She became a member of the botanical garden but hadn’t been able to visit because of her health issues. Her daughter Shelley Cook recently arrived from Denver to help care for Valentine and found the workshop in the events listing on the botanical garden website.

Cook saw the workshop as a break from a schedule filled with many doctor appointments for her mother’s cancer and mild cognitive impairment. “I was looking for anything to do that’s fun because we have not had any fun,” she said. She hadn’t realized that the workshop was hands-on and dressed nicely for their first time, she said laughing. “But we’ll be back. This is really cool.” 

Participants of the gardening workshop for people living with dementia and their caregivers at the San Antonio Botanical Garden tend to vegetables on a raised bed.
Participants of the gardening workshop for people living with dementia and their caregivers at the San Antonio Botanical Garden tend to vegetables on a raised bed. Credit: Brenda Bazán / San Antonio Report

Care and community

As Griffin and Bittle emphasized, a main goal of the workshop is to provide community for people who might otherwise be isolated in their care routines.

Eric Goldsmith said meeting new people each week, such as Valentine and Cook, is part of the pleasure of the workshop. “I get to meet new people and talk. And this is real basic stuff, so doing this activity is kind of fun.”

While dementia can limit what a person can do — for example, reading can be difficult because of short-term memory issues — the gardening workshop is much healthier than just sitting home and watching television, Mable Goldsmith said. 

Mable Goldsmith pulls out a carrot from her garden at home. She brought the carrots home from the Botanical Garden.
Mable Goldsmith pulls out a carrot from her home garden. Credit: Brenda Bazán / San Antonio Report

Of the difficulties they share, she said, “It’s not just him going through it, I’m going through it, too, living with him, trying to understand that it’s not him that’s getting frustrated and upset, it’s the condition that he has.”

Support groups are also helpful, she said, but the gardening workshop “helps us connect, reconnect what we used to have in terms of sharing good things that are going on. And he really enjoys this. He wants to get up in the morning to come to the class.”

Bittle said the benefits of gardening are lending a sense of purpose, “whether it’s something as small as pulling a weed, or something as big as working with a group of people that are learning about gardening, just knowing that you’re making a difference makes a difference in yourself as well.”

A tasty benefit

While some of the fresh produce goes to the onsite Jardin restaurant, an added benefit of the workshop is that participants get to take home a portion of the bounty. 

Mable Goldsmith said her husband didn’t like eating spinach before the workshop, but “now he does, because he knows he grew it here.“

Bags full of chard and spinach harvested by participants of the dementia friendly gardening workshop at the San Antonio Botanical Garden.
Bags full of chard and spinach harvested by participants of the Dementia-Friendly Gardening Workshop at the San Antonio Botanical Garden. Credit: Brenda Bazán / San Antonio Report

The sense of accomplishment that comes with seeing “plants blossom and grow … gives reassurance and competence back that’s [otherwise] gone to the wayside,” she said.

Eric Goldsmith said he enjoys all the vegetables they grow but has his eyes on taking some tomatoes home once they grow later in the season. “Anything out of here is going to taste natural and fresh. Just get a little salt and eat the tomato and there you go.”

The Dementia-Friendly Gardening Workshop is free for participants, running each Wednesday during gardening season from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Advance registration is required, and the workshops, generally limited to 20-25 participants, tend to fill up quickly.

Senior Reporter Nicholas Frank moved from Milwaukee to San Antonio following a 2017 Artpace residency. Prior to that he taught college fine arts, curated a university contemporary art program, toured with...