Verbena Bee

Session One: Bouquet Making Wonderment

It’s a cold winter day in Maine but gardens are alive in our imagination as we make bouquets together at the dementia memory care home. There’s a great deal of flower enthusiasm as the residents gather their favorite blooms and begin crafting their lovely bouquets. Many have an instinctive way of tucking the blooms into the mason jar. There’s a pleasure on their faces as they recall favorite flowers from the past. Memories start surfacing. To encourage reminiscing, I gently ask a beautiful question. If you were a flower in the garden, which one would you be?

This quickly turns into a playful conversation where I start to see glimmers of their family, home and garden. One resident declares she would be a bee. And so it begins. This improvisational dance back and forth between the moment we’re in or a near lifetime ago.

As I prepared for this first session, I’d carefully organized my materials and thought about the mechanics and flow so everything would go smoothly. I laugh now because within minutes of the residents arriving, it was clear this was not going to be a linear experience for anyone. It would require complete fluidity and stepping into the water of the unknown.

The same can be said for my journey to discovering horticultural therapy. What had begun as an impulse to connect with a local dementia care to volunteer bouquet making in 2021, gently meandered to studying horticultural therapy. At my core I understood the deeply powerful benefits of being with plants and nature and wanted to share this with others. On this particular morning, the culmination of all of it was manifesting in a most unexpected way.

Continuing the flower dance, I encouraged a song about flowers. To my amazement, a resident who spent her life as a florist sang out in full, unrestrained joy, “ Pretty Bouquets! Pretty Bouquets!” Her “bird” song was met with another who sang back a hauntingly beautiful response. Which was naturally followed by the original refrain. A second response came in the form of garden poetry. The women were beaming. I was crying gently. I had come to make bouquets with this beautiful group of women and found wonderment.