Barrier-Free Gardening Keeps Everyone Playing

Many people take something like gardening for granted. But for folks with disabilities, raising plants can be a challenge.

If you’re a wheelchair user, that layer of topsoil at your feet can seem like a long way down. If you struggle with arthritis, spending the afternoon tightly grasping garden tools becomes a painful ordeal. If you have problems with motor skills resulting from accident or disease, shovel handles feel long and clumsy.

To deal with these problems, people are turning to a concept that’s fairly new to this area: barrier-free gardening. St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute and the Friends of Manito will offer a workshop to teach ways of making gardening possible for everyone. “Garden for Life! An Introduction to Barrier-Free Gardening” will be April 22. Registration continues through Wednesday .

Barrier-free gardening isn’t a bunch of new products designed to meet the needs of gardeners with special needs. It’s basically a set of do-it-yourself ideas that make getting down and dirty in the soil possible for everybody.

“Sometimes it’s as easy as ‘this will work if the handle was a little shorter,’ other times it’s pretty involved,” said Sheila Yamamoto, a recreational therapist at St. Luke’s who uses gardening as therapy for about half of her patients.

The pretty-involved side can be anything from raised-bed gardens - putting soil into some type of container so that it’s off the ground and in easy reach - to wheelchairaccessible sheds turned into greenhouses.

Some of those set-ups can take time to build, but once in place are permanent, requiring no maintenance at all.

Phil and Margaret Caruso, 95 and 84 respectively, were in an auto accident three years ago. Doctors told them Phil wouldn’t be able to bend his leg anymore, a diagnosis that meant tending to his large backyard garden would be impossible.

Their children, Bill Caruso and gardening expert and workshop speaker Phyllis Stephens, decided barrier-free gardening was just what the couple needed.

Bill spent a few Sundays building large and attractive raised-bed planters in his parents’ back yard. Now, gardening has not only become possible for the Carusos, it’s become more productive, too.

Phil doesn’t have to bend down to tend to his vegetables, and Margaret found the plants even grow better.

“The soil isn’t cold, so you can plant earlier in the year,” she said. Although Margaret wasn’t injured in the accident, she finds her barrierfree garden much easier to care for.

“The planters retain water, so watering is less time-consuming and takes less water, too. I can also get weeding done in less than an hour, where I used to spend all day.”

While the Carusos opted for a permanent modification of their landscape, raised beds don’t require the building of permanent planters.

“People can use whiskey barrels cut in half, and they can put wheels on them if they want,” therapist Yamamoto said. “You can find those or large, lightweight plastic planters at any gardening or home improvement store.”

Making adaptive tools is often even easier. While Yamamoto has yet to find a line designed for disabled users, she said a little ingenuity goes a long way.

Folks who don’t have a tight grip can build up tool handles with foam pipe insulation. Also, small versions of tools designed for children can be used because of their shorter handles, making control easier. Adult-size tools with non-tapered wood handles can be shortened with a saw.

While Yamamoto came up with many of these ideas herself, a recently published book by Gene Rothert, “The Enabling Garden” (Taylor Publishing, $13.95), made her life easier.

“I thought I was addressing this stuff for the first time, but it wasn’t so,” she said.

Rothert’s book outlines ways people can use planters, pulleys and adaptive tools. It advises hanging wind chimes near garden obstacles so those with vision impairments can safely maneuver around the garden.

Rothert - who is the featured speaker at the upcoming workshop - is himself a wheelchair user. He is manager of urban horticulture at the Chicago Botanic Garden and a past president of the American Horticulture Association.

In a phone interview, he said barrier-free gardening isn’t just for green thumbs who are having new troubles with gardening due to a recent accident or illness. Gardening, he said, can be great therapy for anyone trying to adjust to a disability.

“It’s a reversal of dependency,” he said. “The garden is something they can have control over themselves.”

Age isn’t a factor, either. Children benefit from the responsibility of having to take care of plants, while seniors are often relieved to find garden maintenance doesn’t become impossible with age.

“I have talked to people who got rid of their property because of a lack of maintenance capability, but with a little planning, they could have kept their property,” Rothert said. Things as simple as moving highermaintenance plants to the front of the garden or creating easily accessible pathways can make a world of difference to seniors.

If people absolutely can’t get outside, barrier-free gardening methods can be applied indoors, so that even a vegetable garden is possible.

The rules for indoor gardening are often different, though.

“Lots of people are confined indoors, and that’s why I’m so interested in growing with fluorescent lights,” said Sydney McCrea, a Master Gardener with Washington State University’s Cooperative Extension. “But a lot of people don’t know what type of light, how to water, or what type of soil indoor plants need.”

While barrier-free gardening is just coming into its own in the Northwest, there are formal programs that teach the techniques. In Washington, Edmonds Community College offers a certificate program in horticultural therapy which prepares health professionals to use gardening as a form of recreational therapy.

The April 22 conference offers sessions for both home gardeners and professional therapists. While the reason St. Luke’s wanted to host a barrier-free gardening conference is obvious, the Friends of Manito took an interest simply because its members love plants.

“Any program that would enable an individual to have a meaningful experience with nature is within our mission statement,” said Sharon Murphy, a member of the group. “It goes back to the human spirit and the spirit of nature meeting. I think it’s very exciting.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story:

‘Garden for Life’ registration open “Garden for Life!” will be held Saturday, April 22. All sessions are at Deaconess Health and Education Center, 910 W. Fifth Ave. Registration deadline is Wednesday. Cost for the technical series is $30 for professionals and $10 for students. It lasts from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The cost for the community series for the general public is $5. It lasts from 1 to 4:30 p.m. For registration forms, call 838-7274. Speakers are horticultural therapist and author Gene Rothert, physical therapist Cathy Rothert, landscape designer Phyllis Stephens, recreational therapist Sheila Yamamoto and the WSU Master Gardeners.