Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: Adaptive Gardening
There’s no better healer than being out in Nature. I’m talking physically and mentally. But, as I recently experienced, age can catch up and you may not be as “bendable” (ha) as you used to be. (I had hip surgery 2 months ago).
The point is, we can all use some help sometimes. Adaptive gardening is a way to help everyone enjoy gardening.
The National Garden Bureau had an article by Toni Gattone who has written a wonderful book, ‘The Lifelong Gardener, Garden with Ease and Joy at Any Age’. Her article from 2019 is ’10 Adaptive Gardening Rules’.
Maybe kneeling for hours weeding isn’t the dream you thought it would be anymore (or perhaps ever). There’s creating a raised bed, or finding proper tools to make the job easier or that perfect kneeling pad!
Ergonomic tools, those tools that fit YOUR hand better, making the use of them easier, have really exploded across the market over the last 20 years.
Gattone offers some other helpful tips including vertical gardening for those with bad backs. One of the best things you can do for your body is to stretch, stretch, stretch before you start gardening. Do yoga, tai chi, or dance to some upbeat music that gets you moving and warmed up. She also advocates doing a different chore every thirty minutes using a different part of your body as repetitive movements can cause pain. Here is the LINK to the full article.
Written in 1994, Gene Rothert’s book, The Enabling Garden, is highly recommended still! He was the Director Emeritus at the Chicago Botanic Garden and his book remains a resource for those looking to make gardening easier for themselves or loved ones.
Carry on Gardening out of the UK is a great source for tools and how to choose them. The site has expanded considerably to share ideas on gardening after a stroke, gardening with heart disease, gardening with one hand or blind and other issues. As our population ages, it’s even more apparent how important enabling gardens are!
There’s a table top method of gardening where you buy a bag of quality garden soil, lay it on a table, cut holes in the bag and plant! Of course they need to be shallow rooted plants like marigolds, geraniums, lettuce blends and herbs. You also need to slit some holes in the bottom of the bag for drainage.
This is a resource for ideas of what’s out there for garden tools: 25 Adaptive Ergonomic Gardening Tools For Arthritis and Elderly in 2021 (PS, I’m not a huge fan of Amazon BUT, if you can’t find what you want/need LOCALLY, then it’s a good resource with a LOT of tool options)