Keep yourself rooted in the garden
Planning, tools can extend gardening to all abilities
Carol Russell likes to meditate in her garden and has four benches to contemplate the change of seasons as her raised beds of various flowers bloom and her vegetables mature.
The stone benches and beds have purpose beyond providing a serene and beautiful space. Russell was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in April 2017 and her modified garden allows her to stay active — a key recommendation for those with Parkinson’s — and continue to enjoy something she loves.
“It’s mentally stimulating, physically sometimes-hard work, which is what is needed,” she says. “It’s become a passion, because exercise is the prescription. The more you can maintain and keep active, the better off you are.”
The garden is also valuable for another reason.
“One of the things with Parkinson’s is the frustration. It’s kind of like getting hyper,” Russell says. “Things that tend to soothe make things easier.”
Thus, her four benches to enjoy her garden from different vantage points.
Russell’s attraction to gardening wasn’t new. Even before her diagnosis, she had been working toward becoming a Colorado Master Gardener through the CSU Extension in Jefferson County. The volunteer program includes an application, interview, several classes and volunteer work.
Russell was due to begin her volunteer work when she was diagnosed. Since most of the master gardener volunteering was likely too physically demanding, Russell proposed an alternative: writing a blog about adaptive gardening. Her mentor in the program, Nance Tucker, agreed that the information Russell had to share applied to many gardeners who face physical limitations as they age.
“She was the person with some disabilities. I am the senior citizen,” Tucker says. “We started writing the thing together.”
As it turned out, Russell did most of the writing, and Tucker edited the five-part Tips for Senior Gardening for the Jeffco Master Gardeners’ blog — jeffcogardener.blogspot.com — which offers numerous ideas to keep people in their gardens as long as possible.
Russell and Tucker have made substantial changes to the layout and plant choices in their gardens and have updated their tool sheds to include devices that help reduce back and joint strain.
Both have problems with balance. For Russell, whose yard slopes, the solution was installing steps that are easier to navigate than a sloping path. A railing adds extra support.
Russell also added raised beds and chipboard or pea gravel walkways in the vegetable garden to reduce the chances of tripping over uneven surfaces.
“The way we plant the vegetable garden is to put tomatoes in the middle in tomato cages, so you can hold onto the tomato cages as you walk down the walkway,” she says.
The stone raised beds allow her to sit while gardening. Telescoping pruners and other tools allow Russell to extend her reach. A tool that is called a Korean rake, positions the handle differently, so that she uses her shoulder muscles, rather than her hands and wrists to dig and weed. She also has a half-shovel that requires less strength, and tools with handles of different lengths.
Tucker has paths made of large flagstones and patios front and back that make for more even surfaces. She uses rock to reduce weeding and has placed poles strategically that she can use to steady herself or get up from a kneeling position. She plants vegetables in a raised bed purchased by her
sons.
Plant selection is also important. Most gardeners work to create focal points and plant to have flowers in bloom all season. All gardeners must worry about light to be successful, and in dry Colorado, it’s a good idea to group together plants that have similar water needs, Tucker says.
An adaptive gardener also has other considerations. Choosing low maintenance plants for large areas is a must. That allows the gardener to place high-maintenance plants and vegetables in easy-to-reach spots.
Russell also suggests grouping plants of a similar type, so when you have a helper, the person is less likely to pull up a viable plant while weeding. Carefully placed mulch also makes weeds that do spring up more obvious to the nongardener.
Denver Botanic Gardens horti- culturalist Lee McCoy says using adaptive tools is changing the means to accomplish a task. After she tore some cartilage in her wrist, she began using a shovel and trowel that have what is called a pistol grip, meaning the handle is at a different angle than a typical
tool of the same type.
For example, the grip on a trowel is horizontal instead of vertical. That makes it easier to exert downward pressure. She recommends disabilityworktools.com as a place where specialized tools can be ordered.
Some of the more basic adaptive tools can be found at most larger garden centers. These include benches that can be turned upside down to use as kneelers, tools with telescoping handles and nitrile gardening gloves that allow a better grip.
For instance, Echter’s, in Arvada, carries the bench/kneelers, lightweight hoses, hand tools with cushion grips and Fiskar shears, which have a ratcheting action.
For those who are no longer able to garden, contact with plants still can bring pleasure.
In the winter, McCoy does outreach with people who no longer live independently, but still enjoy working with plants. She and volunteers bring a collection of plants for touch and scent to assisted living and memory care centers and adult day cares. Participants typically make a terrarium that they can keep.
In the summer, the outreach is at the Sensory Garden at Denver Botanic Gardens, which participants tour.
McCoy says in a group of participants with early onset dementia, scents often trigger memories. Sage might be associated with stuffing a turkey at Thanksgiving. Often houseplants such as geraniums may be familiar.
She says participants usually react with “a very pure kind of childlike joy” when they encounter a long-forgotten scent. “It’s like going through a closet and finding something you haven’t seen in years,” she says. “It’s the joy of recognition. Those moments are few and far between.”
For people working in their home gardens, the feeling is a different kind of joy.
“Having a garden is … just invigorating,” Russell says. “To see things growing is good for your health.”
Tucker who is 81, and likes to travel and golf when she’s not gardening, puts it a different way:
“I have a neighbor (who is 80) with a more refined garden,” she says. “We laugh at each other: Someday, they’re going to find us dead in the roses, and that’s the way we want to go!”