Accessibility in Our Own Gardens

The maple sap is rising and our thoughts are drifting to spring! As we look forward, I’m receiving questions on how to make simple home gardens more accessible and easier to tend for those of us who feel mobility challenged. As gardeners, we all know that gardening is beneficial and improves our well-being. The biggest challenge for us gimpy gardeners is that the ground is too far away and if you can’t reach your plants, you can’t garden. Accessibility is at the very heart of Therapeutic Gardening. By creating new or adapting existing gardening space to be more gardener-friendly, we reap the benefits - mind, body, and spirit as well as our own homegrown vegies and flowers.

Mobility Challenges

Whether caused by accident, aging or disease, joint and muscle pain can limit our ability to move freely and without pain. Experiencing discomfort can cause us to hang up our trowels and give up gardening altogether. The biggest mobility challenges for gardeners are bending and kneeling which can affect our knees, hips, shoulders and backs. However, there are some helpful ideas that can keep us moving, improve our well-being and keep our thumbs green.

Instead of bending over or kneeling down to reach your garden, it is easy to elevate your growing containers closer to your hands. Possible solutions for elevating your plants include: raising your beds, elevating pots or plant boxes up on stands in a variety of ways, hanging your planters, or try vertical gardening. Each of these ideas can be customized to your specific needs and preferences.

Elevating individual pots or planter boxes is very flexible and can be raised in increments until you figure out the perfect height for you. This can be as simple as setting them up on plant stands, blocks or bricks, or stacking pots on top of each other. Also hanging pots on rails or fences can be very effective. Take a look at gardening catalogs for a great source of pictures and inspiring ideas.

Vertical gardening also gives flexibility by planting at differing heights. The Coastal Maine Botanical Garden has beautiful displays of vertical beds in their Five Senses Garden.

Raised beds can be purchased pre-made from lots of sources, custom built, or are great opportunity to repurpose an old boat, a wine barrel, a wheelbarrow or a used tank. They can also be brightly painted and featured as an art piece.

Raised Bed Heights

By far, the number one question I’ve been asked recently is, “What is the best height for a raised growing bed?” The answer - it depends on your specific needs. Most research on raised beds reports that a soil depth of 8 to 12 inches is adequate for most plants. However, 12 inches is not an adequate height for stiff knees and backs!

I’ve been experimenting in my own garden with different heights of beds for several years, starting with two beds 12 inches deep. Indeed, a foot of soil was quite adequate for the plants, plus I had fewer weeds, fewer rabbits and voles and maybe even fewer bugs. I also felt like I had better control on the quality of my soil. All of those reasons are why raised beds are very popular. However, a growing bed 12 inches deep does not lift the surface high enough for me these days without causing strain or risking injury.

For the next iteration of bed height, we built a raised bed 24 inches high with a wide frame for sitting. We used old beams (untreated) that will not last forever but they are still holding after 8 years. I loved being able to sit at the dirt level which made weeding and deadheading easy. I also enjoyed a close-up view of the flowers, leaf patterns and watching bees and butterflies eye-to-eye. Last year, we added a trellis to one bed to try some vertical gardening. The experiment was unsuccessful. The lesson learned was that my bed was too wide and adding a trellis on top of the 2-foot bed height put the harvest out of reach. I’ll try a different vertical gardening method this year.

Moving Up to Standing Beds

We have a story in our family about raised beds. My husband’s grandfather homesteaded in Jefferson. He was an engineer and his wife was quite mobility challenged. A few years ago, we toured the old family property and after 60 years the ‘stand-up garden’ that he built was still intact. He used cement columns to support a flat concrete table to make it very sturdy with 8-inch-tall wooden sides. My husband remembers his grandmother pulling herself up from her wheelchair and standing for hours tending her vegetables.

My own 2-foot-high sitting beds served me well for several years, but after spinal surgery, a hip replacement and arthritic knees, I started researching standing beds. The challenge of deeper beds is the amount of soil it takes to fill them and the strength of the structure required to retain it. Understanding these 2 issues explains why grandfather chose his method of construction. To address the soil depth and structural issues of new standing beds, we experimented using ubiquitous 55-gallon metal drums. The barrels were cut in half length-wise giving us two growing beds per barrel approximately 2-foot by 3-foot in size and 12 inches deep. We determined the height for the standing beds by measuring the distance from my hand to the ground which is 30 inches. The barrel-beds hold about 4 cubic feet of soil which equates to two large bags of potting mix per barrel.

Last year, we added two more barrels (4 growing beds) and set them on wooden pallets which worked very well. I planted them with taller annuals as a cutting garden. Weeding was a breeze, with no stooping whatsoever. I love being at eye level with the flowers and pollinators and it made harvesting and deadheading a breeze. I had zero critters nibbling or digging in the tall beds and I could easily see and pick off the Japanese beetles. All raised beds dry out faster than ground level beds but for me the advantages far out way the watering disadvantage.

Another gardener friend is also using barrels as standing beds. She used heavy duty plastic barrels and built wooden stands. The gardener is 6 feet tall and her standing beds measure 45 inches from the ground to the top of her barrel-beds. That height is more than a foot taller than what is most comfortable for me.

In Summary

I encourage you to experiment and try different methods to elevate your growing containers, be they pots, planters, raised beds, a wine barrel, an old boat, or a metal drum. Hang a basket, drape a deck railing, or plant using vertical gardening techniques. A soil depth of 12 inches is adequate for most garden plants. If you want to sit on the ledge of your planter, 8-10 inches wide is a comfortable seat width. A height of 18- 24 inches is a relaxed height for sitting. For standing-beds, the height is very dependent on what is comfortable for you. An average range of 30-45 inches high from the ground to the top of the soil is a comfortable standing height for most people. All of these dimensions should be tested against your own physical dimensions to ensure your garden is as comfortable and therapeutic as possible for YOU. Making your own gardens more accessible to you is a first step in understanding the Enabling Gardens.

The Enabling Gardens

For the next several months, the Therapeutic Gardening Article Series will explore the specialized Enabling Gardens whose focus is to assist and improve the physical functions of the visitor or gardener by employing gardening as a healing interaction. Enabling Gardens directly address gardeners' or visitors' limited mobility, agility, and reduced physical strength. The design of Enabling Gardens removes physical barriers and concentrates on accessibility needs including wheel chairs, walkers, special ergonomic tools, and other adaptive gardening devices. Enabling Garden design also considers safety and security for persons with memory and awareness difficulties. Enabling Gardens can be located in private settings or within public venues.

Please email me at Thera.gardening@gmail.com if you would like to learn more about Therapeutic Gardening and/or if you are interested in joining our committee.

Author: Geneie Everett, PhD, RN is a member of the Garden Club of Wiscasset and Chairs the GCFM, Therapeutic Gardening Committee.