Gardening for Seniors and the Physically Challenged

Are you in a wheelchair, and long to dig in the dirt and create

flowering beauty and grow far more zucchini than you can give

away? Or are your knees just starting to age and even though

you’ve loved gardening all your life, you’re having more trouble

getting up and down and are afraid you’ll have to give up

gardening altogether? Did you botch the last pruning of your

roses because of the worsening arthritis in your hands?

Welcome to the world of the physically challenged gardener.

Don’t despair. Adapt!

There’s plenty of help out there in the form of advice, tools,

raised flower beds and other specialized equipment.

A Google search of “Disabled gardening tools” leads to 125

websites with specific helpful adaptive equipment. “Disabled

gardening” gives a whopping 873,000 results where you can find

advice and “handicapped gardening” yields 111,000. Let those

arthritic fingers do your walking!

Problem: “The ground is just too far down there!”

Think about doing your gardening while sitting on a chair,

instead of on the ground, squatting or bending over. The most

obvious solution is to build raised flower beds and scatter

containers throughout your garden area. Buy cheap plastic outdoor

chairs and place one beside each mini-garden so you don’t have to

drag or carry when it’s time to weed. You can just sit down and

enjoy the feel of moist earth beneath your fingers and breathe in

the heavenly smell of freshly applied fish emulsion.

If you hang a cup holder on the edge of your container, you can

even have the luxury of tea or coffee with your weeds. Maybe the

fish emulsion should wait.

Don’t think about what you’ve lost now that you can’t crawl

around weeding the perennial border; teach your grandchild or a

neighborhood kid the joy to be found doing that task … you’ve

just discovered a new adventure in gardening. The good news is

that you may find whole different special areas of your yard

where you can stick a mini-garden.

Get creative. Put a beautiful container near your front door and

plant wonderfully scented flowers to greet your guests … or

perhaps a nice cherry tomato plant they can steal from on their

way to ring your doorbell. Put a waist high herb garden right

outside your kitchen door and add an area in it for your favorite

cut flowers.

When you’re deciding where to locate the raised bed or container,

be sure to remember physically demanding practicalities like

dragging a heavy hose to water it. Think and plan a low energy

solution for what you’ll do with the compost material.

Problem: “My painful hands don’t have the strength for …”

You can get tools which extend your arms to reach the ground

level flower bed from a sitting position. Several manufacturers

make specially tools with light weight handles designed to keep

the wrist and hand in a stress-free position and to provide a

firmer grip. Small, light rakes, hoes, etc. like this can work

wonders.

Think ratchet pruners, ratchet lopping shears … let the laws of

physics give your hands a hand. You’ll be amazed when you look

at the tools available. Pull difficult weeds by stepping on a

lever.

Problem: “I get so tired so quickly.”

Hey, the weeds didn’t grow all at once; you don’t have to pull

them all at once. Pace yourself. Find ways to make gardening

something you do while you sit and drink a cup of tea and listen

to the birds, rather than a work chore you slave away at for a

full afternoon. Pull one weed from the scented garden near your

front door on your way out and another weed on the way in. Plant

parsley in your kitchen door herb garden while your toast is

toasting and the coffee is dripping.

Buy and plant 3 packs of flowers instead of a whole flat. Take a

nice aerobic walk around your yard, stopping at a different

container for 5 minutes “conversation” with your plants on each

cycle, then go back inside and plop on the recliner. You’ll be

amazed at how much gets done in these mini-work sessions. Your

heart will love you, too.

Remember, one of the nice things about flowers is they don’t have anything to prove. We can all learn a lesson from them.