Disabled gardening

gardening for disabled

They say disability is not inability so is disabled gardening.We all know of the slogan on the TV commercial that reminds us that life comes at you hard. It really does. Sometimes it even comes entirely too hard.

In such times when life seems to come the hardest, injury or illness may leave us with physical limitations that we must adapt to. We have to learn how to do even the most ordinary things in a new way,like disability gardening.

For those of us who’ve experienced such events in life and may now be gardening for the disabled isn’t out of the question. Like most things we already love about gardening, we’ve merely encountered a situation where we must explore, experiment, and adapt to best enjoy our environment.

Isn’t that what gardening’s all about, anyway?

Handicapped gardening, or gardening in such a fashion that adaptations must be made to meet physical limitations, can be just as fulfilling as it was before the life event that left us seeking new gardening methods. And the physical limitations that left us handicapped are varied and the gardening methods best suited to our new gardening skills are varied, too.

It could be that our new way of gardening, our , is the result of illness that left us with diminished stamina. That huge garden we so enjoyed is now much too big to tackle and scaling down in size is the answer. We can concentrate our energies on a smaller area closer to home and become skilled at compact gardening.

Perhaps injury has made it impossible to kneel down or bend over to tend the soil and plants on the ground the way we used to. Perhaps we now depend on a wheelchair for mobility. Gardening is not out of the question.

In such cases, raised beds make disabled gardening a continued source of joy and reward. Raised beds can be constructed from almost anything that stacks, including bricks, stone, garden timbers, and bales of hay.

The beds just need to be tall enough to raise the surface of the soil to a height that is easy to reach without causing undue strain. Many disabled gardeners find that long narrow beds work best.

Hanging baskets and tall container plants can increase the diversity in gardening for disabled techniques where mobility is impaired. These types of planters work great for apartment and condo life, too, where there may not be access to enough ground space to build raised beds.

If injury or illness has left you unable to see the visual beauty of your beloved garden, other beautiful aspects of the garden can be emphasized in gardening for the blind. Focus on fragrance and texture, the more diversity of each the better. Include birdbaths and feeders to entice songbirds to add an auditory dimension to your garden.

Life does come at us hard sometimes but most gardeners find intrigue and challenge to be one of the most rewarding aspects of gardening or disabled gardening in the first place. After all, even the most hale and hearty gardener still has to contend with the fickle and frustrating elements of weather. Achieving beauty against such odds as disabled gardening is one of the reasons we keep the garden growing in the first place.

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