A shared living room for a campus of care

Granly Gardens is Dania Society’s newest shared space, a therapeutic garden completed in 2025 at the center of the society’s Campus of Care in Burnaby. The campus covers seven landscaped acres at Norland Avenue and Canada Way and puts a full range of seniors’ living on one site. Dania Home provides residential care, Dania Manor offers assisted living, Carl Mortensen Manor provides affordable 55+ housing, and the newly built Dania Gardens adds independent living. Granly Gardens was built for all of them: residents and families from every building, at every stage of care.

Walking trails wind through the garden and open onto a central meeting place framed by perennials and evergreens. There, two circular seating areas sit side by side. In each one, wall-mount Ogden Benches run along a low curved concrete wall that wraps around a paved gathering point. Backed sections alternate with long backless runs, so people can settle in against a backrest or perch and face whichever way the conversation goes. Each circle is left open where the path comes in, which keeps it feeling welcoming rather than closed off.

It’s less a courtyard than a shared living room. That suits a community that started in 1940 with one wish for “a place for old Danes” to find comfort, and has spent more than 80 years building exactly that.