Accessible Gardening: Making Gardening Easy For Everyone!
Gardening should be accessible to people in all walks of life!
There are a huge number of health benefits to gardening. It helps people burn calories and keep active; it can also help improve an individual’s mental health and emotional well-being. Accessible gardening makes sure that anyone can reap these benefits, regardless of their physical ability.
One of the main ways to keep gardening accessible is by using raised beds and containers. This eliminates the need to bend over to reach the plants, and the gardener can sit while working. This also means that the people can easily get to the garden along paved or gravel walkways, whether using a wheelchair, walker or cane.
You also might want to consider creating a keyhole garden, which is not only accessible, but is also good for growing in warm, dry climates. You can read more about them here.
Tricks-of-the-trade!
For people who want to plant seeds by hand in their garden, but have difficulty bending over, they can use a long, narrow piece of PVC pipe to poke a hole into the ground and drop the seed in the top of the pipe to plant it in the new hole. Remove the pipe and use it to push soil over the seed.
This video is a simple example of a PVC planter!
One of the most labour intensive aspects of gardening is the constant watering! Using sprinklers or other automatic watering systems can help make that task easier. There are also hose adapters to make it easier to reach plants further away without too much strain.An excellent step-by-step guide to a self watering garden assembly can be found here at The Family Handyman.Some people may find wood or metal gardening tools heavy or difficult to grip. Consider adding foam grips, or shopping around for lighter tools. Painting a tool in a bright colour will make it easier to see for people with vision loss.
We recommend BigYellowBag’s Black Garden Soil to gardeners of all different physical capabilities. Our soil is loaded with nutrients, and organic matter; it has been engineered to give your plants everything they need to thrive! Having proper garden soil means that you won’t have to spend as much time or money seeking out fertilizers, or other amendments to improve the soil quality. Also, the delivery of the BigYellowBag in a mess free container means that you don’t have to lug heavy bags of soil to and from your local garden centre. You also will have much less mess to worry about after your project!
Get Creative
I have seen so many great accessible gardening ideas on the web, and with challenges come solutions. We would love to see any creative accessible gardening tricks you have on our Facebook page! If you aren’t particularly creative, just head on over to Google and find neat solutions like this one:
Finally, remember that gardening can be a very social activity. It’s a great way for people of all walks of life to come together and work on a project together. Get involved in a local horticultural society or invite friends and family to join in.The best part of gardening is getting to share it with others.