Madison McKee was the de Tornyay Center for Healthy Aging’s 2024–2025 Myrene C. McAninch Undergraduate Scholar. Her research project was “Examining the Impacts of Facilitated Garden Activities for Individuals Living with Dementia and their Caregivers,” and her faculty mentor was Basia Belza.
What made you choose nursing?
I’m in the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, so I feel like my journey into nursing is a bit more zigzaggy than others.
My background is actually in landscape architecture. I really love my work in landscape, especially the design process and the opportunity to shape meaningful spaces. While I was working that job, I was also finding other outlets to do community service work with my community, and I loved that face-to-face interaction. Then, combined with an injury of mine a few years ago and my own hospital and rehab experience, there were a lot of outlets pointing me in the direction of nursing and healthcare.
I came into nursing knowing that I want to do it pretty creatively. Maybe I want to work in the hospital, but I’m also really interested in seeing what other forms of nursing there are and how healthcare can tie back to landscape architecture and art.
How do you feel like that background in landscape architecture comes together with nursing?
This project that I’m working on at the center is the synthesis of landscape architecture and nursing. I always knew that there was a tie, even before coming into healthcare. My firm designed landscape and therapeutic spaces for the local hospital. There’s a direct tie between nature and healing. I wanted to explore that both in my old job and now in nursing school.
What interests you about healthy aging?
It’s super important to work within healthy aging because not only is it helpful for other people, but it’s also applicable to myself. We’re all going to go through this process of aging. Figuring out how to make people feel comfortable and happy is only going to benefit all of us as we age.
Could you talk a little bit more about what your project is?
There’s an existing garden, called Maude’s Garden, at the Memory Hub. The Memory Hub is a place for collaboration and innovation and serves individuals living with memory loss. Genevieve [Wanucha, Maude’s Garden project lead at the Memory Hub] helped to create a garden in the backyard space. She and others designed the garden back in 2020 based on focus groups within the memory loss community, so it could specifically meet the needs of the Memory Hub. There’s a lot of research that indicates that being in natural spaces and gardening spaces can improve anyone’s mental well-being, especially someone who’s living with memory loss.
My project is to create a garden experience for people living with memory loss and their caregivers to explore the five senses. The idea is to make this program so it’s repeatable and easy to do. Our vision is that we can create this easily replicated program so that other gardens and hospitals or medical spaces could also do this program.
How do you plan to get feedback from participants?
It’s going to be more of a collaborative discussion. We don’t want it to feel sterile or daunting. We’ll ask people about their mood when they walk in and then compare their mood after the group discussion. So it’ll be a check-in, then the garden activity and then a group discussion about what elements they liked most, what they didn’t like and what experiences stood out to them.
Has there been anything that surprised you while you’ve been working on the project?
Finding the project. It gives me hope that people are thinking about this, that there is research being conducted about this. There is this reputation that working with older adults is not very fun or it can be a very sterile environment. But there are a lot of people who know that it’s very fun and very variable, and it can be organic and creative. I knew that, but I’m pleasantly surprised that so many other people are also thinking about that.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
I’m really inspired by both of my mentors: Genevieve and Basia. I think they are both very special people, and their passion for working with older adults and healthy aging is just infectious. It’s palpable talking to them, and I feel really inspired. I feel lucky to be a part of it.