Scents for the Memory
Peter explains how he has been using teapot’s planted with mint as a memory aid for people suffering from dementia
ASPECIFIC smell can be an immediate prompt to the memory, taking you back years to perhaps a moment in your childhood. For me it’s the smell of new mown hay; gathering it in on my grandfather’s farm using horse drawn carts. And, from my late teens, the fragrance of perennial phlox from massed displays by Blackmore and Langdon at county agricultural shows.
“I am on the lookout for other scented leaves”
Working with school children this year I’ve been getting them to grow mint in teapots (for mint tea). They’ve shown real interest in the different types from chocolate mint to lime mint and spearmint. There are over 20 different kinds, tastes and fragrances. In mining areas mint tea was even taken to help clear the chests of miners working underground in dust filled atmospheres.
Helping a gardening club at an Abbeyfield residential home for people with dementia, I thought it would be a nice idea to get the elderly to follow the youngster’s example and grow some mint in teapots. What I hadn’t realised was that the sense of smell, linked to memory, is the last memory to go and these residents immediately had recall when mint leaves were crushed. They even remembered the mint planting three days later, when little else remained in short term recall. Now I am on the lookout for other scented leaves on plants that are easy to grow, including scented leaved geraniums.
Following these experiences I have been asking people what scents prompt their memories and examples include: a gran who always had dried lavender bags dotted around the house; honeysuckle in bloom at a family country picnic; lilac in a garden where two employed gardeners didn’t speak and a child acted as go between.
What fragrance prompts you memory I wonder?