Don Kinast, left, a resident at St. Banabas Nursing Home, watches as Ben Smith, 16, a Boy Scout with Troop 81, explain his wheelchair high-rise garden.

GIBSONIA — Safe from the soggy gray weather outside, a group of patients at the St. Barnabas Nursing Home on Jan. 15 gathered around a new gardening table built by a Boy Scout.

The table has two built-in tubs to be filled with dirt and plants, which are under grow lights. The dementia patients in wheelchairs can reach the table easily and reconnect with gardening skills without having to go outside or reach the ground.

Ben Smithgall, 16, built the table with help from his parents, neighbor and fellow members of Boy Scout Troop 81 based in Wexford. Smithgall lives in Pine Township.

"It's highly beneficial to patients with dementia. It allows them to reconnect with a prior experience, and it stimulates them," said Smithgall, who completed the project on the road to earning his Eagle Scout rank.

His mother Amy knows a former recreation director at St. Barnabas who suggested the project.

"Ben knew he wanted to do something for the people here, it was just a matter of planting the right project in his head," his mother said.

Smithgall put about 40 hours into designing the table and another 70 hours on building it. He also researched the idea of gardening as therapy before deciding on building the table.

Gardening can help stimulate the senses of people with dementia. Simply by feeling the soil or moving around plants, there is a sense of connection and control, he said.

St. Barnabas officials embraced the concept.

"This will be a great activity for residents," said Shelly Jenkins, the nursing home administrator.

Don Kinast, who has lived at the nursing home for two years and is a member of the nursing home's resident council, thanked Smithgall for providing the table.

"This is a great project. … I know people in this building will be grateful to use this," he said.

Similar gardening centers or projects have been used throughout the country as therapy.

These types of tables are available commercially, but they are expensive, said Smithgall. A gardening therapy table can cost about $2,500, but the table he built only cost $400. St. Barnabas paid some of the cost, and he raised the rest through a fundraiser.