For The Love Of Plants & People

This creative gardener enjoys not only her own garden but sharing the therapeutic benefits with the community

- Claire Bickle

To share the love of gardening with young and old is a wonderful thing: a gift to those receiving and an inspiration to the curious of mind, young and old.

One woman delivers all these things to many on a daily basis through her business and workshops, The Beez Neez Creative Gardening: For Garden Therapy.

Horticulturist Ann-Marie Andrews has forged a career in bringing the joys of gardening to not only the many keen gardeners at a neighbouring garden centre but also kids via creative gardening workshops as well as elderly people in aged-care facilities.

She takes immense pleasure in her own small garden, too, as well as the plants inside her house in the subtropical western suburbs of Brisbane where she lives with her daughter Lucy, 19, and a menagerie of animals.

As well as gardening, Ann-Marie enjoys creating artworks of all kinds — cartoons in particular — and is a mad keen opshopper. But what she’s most passionate about is the therapeutic effects of gardening on people.

THERAPY FOR ELDERLY FOLK

What Ann-Marie does with elderly people is truly inspiring. Each week she visits an aged-care facility where she has set up a “garden club”. She instigates projects such as planting a raised garden bed or mobile garden (for patients who are bed-bound) and propagating new plants, plus weekly garden maintenance activities such as watering, mulching and potting.

She finds that people participate differently according to their physical and mental capabilities. Some are able to actively garden while others prefer to sit and watch and comment on the proceedings. Many residents have gardened before, she says, and will speak fondly of certain plants and take great joy in sharing their gardening stories.