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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 pruner, rachet 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.
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