By Claire Cuccio, Program Coordinator, Elderwise
A decade ago, Director of the UW Medicine Memory and Brain Wellness Center (MBWC) Thomas Grabowski, MD, recruited a science writer to represent the Center with a website. The new hire made a coastal move from Boston, where she had been working as a science writer at MIT and had just joined the outreach team at the Frontotemporal Disorders (FTD) Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Today, Genevieve Wanucha is busy with progressively expanding work at UW Medicine, serving as the Communications Specialist for the MBWC. On behalf of the MBWC, she also works for the Memory Hub community center, where she’s helping to innovate dementia support through physical, emotional, and artistic means.
Technically speaking, Genevieve is a science writer and editor for the communications network of the multi-faceted MBWC, which represents the center’s three pillars: clinical care, innovative Alzheimer's disease research, and dementia-friendly community. She manages the website and creates publications. As is, that’s a full-time job.
Genevieve presents on the therapeutic potential of gardens at the 2025 Ignite Aging conference. Credit: Keri Pollack
Genevieve’s commitment to integrate the science of dementia with creative experiences, however, drives her to pursue work in overlapping domains. To the Memory Hub community, Genevieve is best known for her vision, leadership, and care for Maude's Garden at the Memory Hub, from the soil up through the programs and events offered there since 2022.
The achievement of the garden took a village of helpers, instructors, university leaders, and mentors. Like an Acknowledgements section in a publication, it is impossible to name everyone. Yet Genevieve is most grateful to Dr. Grabowski and the Memory Hub’s Director, Marigrace Becker, for their support and trust in her to handle multiple duties.
The burgeoning dementia and horticulture expert considers the garden the culmination of a holistic dream in which her love for her late mother, art, plants, community, and her inherent belief in the healing power of gardens come together.
Through the years, Genevieve’s constants have been lessons from the loss of her mother from early-onset dementia and her abiding passion for plants and their representation in art. “By 2016, I finally felt ready to follow in my mother’s footsteps and try to figure out whether I, too, was an artist,” she says. She got her start while taking evening classes in botanical drawing and watercolor at the UW Center for Urban Horticulture, and then self-teaching and practicing. Today, she is an experienced botanical artist.
Ring of Fire, a watercolor and color pencil by Genevieve Wanucha
As Maude’s Garden matures, Genevieve continues to help facilitate the Garden Discovery Program, which is offered in partnership with Seattle Parks and Recreation. She devises volunteer garden work parties and nature-based activities for persons living with memory loss and their caregivers. She is mastering the arts of a sensory designer, cultivator of herbs, and developer of inclusive garden tea workshops for the Memory Hub. She is currently nurturing new MBWC partnerships to offer tea workshops at the Memory Hub, including with the Seattle Public Library and the Frye Art Museum.
"At first, I thought that a tea blend inspired by the flavors of Maude's Garden could be a nice gift for our supporters or event attendees," she says. But I soon realized that I had tapped into a vein of tradition that has brought people joy, health, and social connection across history and cultures. Tea is endlessly educational, social, and often connects people to their personal and family traditions and memories. Tea workshops fit into the mission of the Memory Hub to offer support and engagement opportunities to people living with memory loss and their families, and I am grateful for the opportunity to see where this idea goes—in such supportive partnerships with our collaborators and community partners."
Several collaborators have nurtured Genevieve’s knowledge and care for gardens, including Peach Jack and Laura Rumpf, who are registered horticultural therapists with deep roots in the garden’s development; Dawn Robinson, a horticultural therapy practitioner; Jake Harris of Stone Soup Gardens, the garden’s contractor; and many special community volunteers.
Genevieve possesses a determined mind and a unique capacity to fill her multidimensional roles. But she doesn’t see the roles as divergent or one in isolation from the other. Her MBWC communications work benefits from her close connection to life at the Memory Hub, where she can see different programs in action, meet participants, and engage people in the garden. And while she is immersed in research findings, she is able to serve as a valuable resource for researchers interested in studying how gardens and therapeutic horticulture can improve the quality of life of people living with memory loss and their care partners.
Courtesy: UW Medicine
Genevieve believes that her dual growth in science communications and botanical creation dovetails. “I’m an idea generator,” she explains, and elaborates, “I’m creative—my brain doesn’t stop working.” Genevieve Wanucha is living through the growth of Maude’s Garden, through the art of tea and botanicals on paper, interwoven with her work for MBWC communications.
Outside of work, she carves out time for rest, artwork, and her family. She especially enjoys cooking, making art, and exploring nature with her son Wes, who, as it turns out, was born the very same week that Maude’s Garden opened.
