We design, build and install enabled gardens
garden for a disabled person. a garden for a elderly person
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Building enabled gardens, enabling elderly and disabled people
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What is a Enabled Garden
It's quite simply designing and adapting your garden to enable access to work on and enjoy spending time in, when these things have been made difficult by age, illness or a injury that makes bending difficult. Put another way, it's a garden for a disabled person or a garden for a elderly person.
Our gardens can become inaccessible when we use a wheelchair or have difficulty bending or kneeling. and sometimes become Just something we look at through the window, watching the tidy borders gradually being taken over by weeds and the lawn left overgrown. We could,If we can afford too, pay to have the borders weeded and the lawn mown while we stay indoors, surfing the net or watching the TV. BUT there's a better way. Enabled gardens, enabling access for elderly and disabled gardeners.
Widen paths so that we can walk with our sticks, be able to use our wheeled seats or wheelchairs and other mobility aids like walkers to get around the garden. Hard surfaces are much better for wheelchairs and walking sticks than gravel. Width and materials are discussed on my garden layout for the elderly page.
If your garden slopes, design pathways so that slopes are easy to walk up or get a wheelchair up.
1:20 is the preferred maximum gradient. A gradient of 1:12 is the maximum given in the British Standards, but In practice this is a bit steep for older people and wheelchair users, although a slightly steeper gradient over a shorter distance may be easier to handle than a gentler one over a long distance. Long gradients of more than 1:20 should have level resting areas at about every 30m.
Raise the garden beds so that weeding and planting is less of a challenge for our bad backs, shaky legs and arthritic joints. Sleeper raised beds laid on there sides are great for sitting on to weed and sow or just to sit and relax. Plan the width to allow you to be able to reach into the center of the bed without leaning or stretching. Lots of materials can be used to construct raised beds, I have listed some on my raised beds page. Containers like pots or buckets can be placed on a table or raised frame to use as smaller plant beds. Set the height to make them comfortable for working from a standing, leaning or seated position.
Have plenty of places to sit and rest. Place benches or anything sturdy enough to take your weight at strategic intervals around the garden.
Handrails fitting handrails for steps, ramps, abrupt changes in level or where people with walking difficulties are likely to need extra support and around ponds are an important part of a enabled garden design.
Watering is time consuming and can be made easier in a enabled garden, light plastic, flat sided watering cans are easier to use than a round ones and water butts and stand pipes at convenient places around the enabled garden make watering easier.
Who Can Benefit from Enabled Gardening?
Anyone who is finding gardening more and more difficult can benefit from an enabling garden.
Raised beds can make it easier for gardeners with a bad back to work without stooping.
Wide paths fitted with handrails can enable gardeners in wheelchairs.
People who suffer from lack of strength or finger flexibility can use modified or “easy grip” tools.
Gardeners with Chronic Back Pain. Bending, lifting and twisting are movements which can exacerbate the problem but by making even basic changes to garden layout, like wider pathways and raised beds, gardeners with “bad backs” can be enabled to keep on gardening.
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Enabled garden tips for gardeners with Chronic Back Pain.
Dealing with Back Pain in the garden
Raising the level of your garden from ground level to waist high by installing raised garden beds reduces the amount of bending to tend your plants, helping to alleviate any stress to chronic back pain sufferers.
The higher the raised bed the more drainage rubble and topsoil will be needed to fill it and the heavier the bed will be. So make sure the bed or retaining wall is well built with adequate drainage. More about retaining walls here. If you are suffering from chronic back pain don't design your bed to be any wider than two feet from either side, or you will have to stretch to reach the middle.
If you prefer to have raised containers or your enabled garden design does not allow for large raised beds, pots are a great way of raising your plants to waist high. Pots and containers can easily be arranged on sturdy fixed shelfs or a table.
Another way of raising plants to save bending, including tomatoes, beans and cucumbers is to install a trellis and train the plants to grow upwards. More about gardening with a bad back here.
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Enabling Garden Layout for arthritis sufferers.
Not only does gardening encourage beneficial gentle exercise, a well designed garden and use of adopted tools can help minimise wear and tear on joints for arthritis sufferers and the very act of creating a well-tended vegetable or flower bed can also provide some distraction from the pain.
As well as the enabled garden design tips I have outlined on this page, like wide, smooth pathways and raised beds, to further help minimise wear and tear on joints for arthritis sufferers. In areas of the garden where you must kneel, install handrails and benches that you can use to lower and lift yourself. The rails will help take some of the weight and stress off of your knees. Installing a water supply in a sensible place will save carrying heavy watering cans, which can stress the forearm, wrist and fingers.
Using the correct gardeners tools will help a lot, thin handles can be painful to grip for arthritic hands. so use lightweight tools with thick, padded handles. Ergonomic hoes, shovels, spades and cultivators are all available with cross bars to make handling easier. Wearing gloves can help cushion your finger joints and help grip tools,wearing knee pads and using a good kneeler with side bars makes kneeling easier.
Summery of tips to help gardening with Arthritis
Garden in raised beds or containers that minimise bending and stooping. .
Make the garden accessible by instaling pathways three feet wide, with a non-slippery surface with handrails or hand grips.
Use light-weight tools with thick handles that are easy on your joints. Use kneelers and pads.
Specially adapted tools for easy grip are available from this page on my site tools for the disabled
Above all else pace yourself and take a rest now and then.
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| wheeled gardening seat |
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| This rolling gardeners seat can help avoid painful bending or stooping when gardening with a painful back, The swivel tractor-type seat lets you sit and work up to 23" above the ground and roll around on four wheels.
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