If your mom and dad always loved to garden, mobility issues become a challenge. It’s harder for a senior who needs a cane, walker, or wheelchair to get around an uneven garden. Not being able to get outside and tend to plants is also upsetting to the avid gardener. Here are some tips for creating gardens for seniors with mobility issues.
Planter Pots
Half whiskey barrels and large plastic planters offer plenty of room for crops. Set the planters in easy to reach areas on a deck or paved patio and fill them with potting soil. Talk to your parent about the vegetables, herbs, or flowers they want to grow and get seeds or seedlings. Care takes little effort as watering and harvesting crops are really all your senior parent has to do.
Raised Beds
Raised beds lift the height of the garden to an easy-to-reach level. Build a raised bed using lumber, bricks, or even old tires. With a rolling garden seat, a parent using a can will have no problem harvesting crops or removing weeds. If a wheelchair is necessary, make the raised beds narrow enough so that the center is easily reached from the wheelchair. Building this type of garden on a patio or along the edges of a sidewalk or driveway ensures it’s easy to go from the house to the garden beds.
Wall Gardens
Building a garden vertically rather than horizontally is very helpful to a senior confined to a wheelchair. One way you can do this is by taking skids that have not been treated with chemicals and securing them to form a teepee shape. Insert small pots into the slats and plant vegetables, herbs, and flowers in the pots. A wall garden eliminates the need to bend over or kneel down in order to get to ground level.
Window Boxes
Many vegetables, such as green beans, tomatoes, peppers, and radishes do well in window boxes. Your senior parent can tend to the garden from a deck, patio, or even from inside the home by opening the window. If you do the window box route, flowering vegetable plants like scarlet runner beans also look beautiful from a distance.
With plenty of fresh vegetables to harvest all summer, your mom or dad will love turning his or her crops into delicious meals. If you hire a senior care service, talk to the senior care provider about incorporating any of the crops into meals that your senior parent will love.
If you or an aging loved one are considering Senior Care Services in Dover MA, or anywhere in Eastern Massachusetts, please call the caring staff at CARE Resolutions – (508) 906-5572.
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