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“Gardening with Disabilities”

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.

This article on Gardening with Disabilities is brought to you by www.backyard-gardening.com