Gardening for all abilities
We share how gardening has changed lives, and ideas to help you garden, whether you have a disability or just aren’t as mobile as you’d like
Why a disability or reduced mobility doesn’t have to prevent you gardening
If you were ever in doubt of the therapeutic benefits of gardening, ask BBC Gardeners’ World TV presenter Mark Lane, who says horticulture brought him back from “a very dark place” after a car crash left him using a wheelchair. “Gardening has changed my life on a physical, emotional and mental level,” he says, “just being outside surrounded by nature… it’s mindfulness, I suppose. You become focused and before you know it you’ve forgotten your problems.” Mark has created a successful garden design business and last year joined GW TV, where he highlights, among other things, issues for those with mobility problems. Although born with spina bifida, it hardly affected him until after the accident 16 years ago. “We had to suddenly rethink our lives and my partner, Jasen, said, ‘you know so much about plants why don’t you do something with them?’.” After a garden landscape course, he hasn’t looked back. His gardens for clients, both without and with mobility problems, avoid a straightsided, raised-bed, ‘institutionalised’ look, instead he incorporates features like raised tables and uses a long-handled spade to dig holes and a ‘grabber’ to handle plant pots. Mark’s biggest bugbear is paths that are too narrow for wheelchairs and a lack of turning spots; and he recommends raised path edging for those with spatial awareness problems. In his own garden, hedges are at a height he can trim himself. “I want the garden to be like a normal garden so there are hedges that are at a ‘teasing’ height for those standing who can see over them. Of course, I can’t, but I can still see a hedge and wonder what is around the corner.” After Mark’s many successes in gardening so far you can’t help wondering what else is around the corner for him.