Why Don’t We Go into the Garden? The Care Culture Map and Handbook

Author Biography

Debbie Carroll and Mark Rendell are both Garden Designers who teamed up to find the answer to a deceptively simple question they had "Why aren't care gardens more actively used?" This is the subject of their series of books and tools in the 'Why don't we go into the garden?' series. Their research project grew to be one of the largest of its kind in the UK and took them into new territory (for garden designers) deep inside care settings. They founded Step Change Design to share their findings and promote their new design approach, 'Relationship-Centred Design', with both the care and design sectors. Debbie Carroll  is passionate about gardens being actively used. Her 20years of designing across a range of settings has always been driven by the belief that ‘the gardens that last are the gardens that are loved’, and it is this very human factor that resonates throughout their books. Debbie is an Accredited Garden Designer with the British Association of Landscape Industries, Special Adviser on the Outdoors for the National Activity Providers Association and on a personal mission to ensure care home doors are open to the garden. Debbie continues to run Step Change Design into its 2nd decade sharing their research through this book a range of workshops, webinars and other speaking opportunities. Mark Rendell is a project manager, coach, gardener and garden designer based in North Wales. He set up 'The Growing Company' in 2000, primarily to raise awareness of the importance of the outdoors in aiding healing, recovery and respite in health and care settings. With a background in Health (he worked in the NHS on HIV/AIDS related issues in the 90s) and in Environmental Projects (he set up the UK's telephone directory recycling schemes on behalf of BT and Yellow Pages in 1998), he is also a trainer and project manager specialising in behaviour change, team dynamics and project management. Mark left Step Change Design in December 2021 after writing the Designer Handbook with Debbie in order to pursue his many other projects, consolidate his diverse work experiences and to (finally) complete the renovation of his 200 year old property in Snowdonia.