Gardens of Delight

By Sarah Yates

Gardeners come in all shapes and abilities, and their gardens can be designed accordingly. Those with visual disabilities might develop scented or textured gardens. Some people garden in raised beds for easier access. People with limited space can use containers like terracotta pots or even garbage bags on balconies and decks.

Using adaptations, hired help and available advice, as well as initiative and willpower, gardeners with disabilities grow flowers, vegetables and fruits all over Canada.

When zoologist John Hulley could no longer chase animals in the field because of his multiple sclerosis, he designed a greenhouse and applied his knowledge to gardening. Warren and Marsha Reese grow more than a year’s supply of tomatoes, plus cucumber, catnip and an assortment of other greenery, on a narrow, third-floor balcony - manoeuvring their two wheelchairs between the plants.

John describes his "greenhouse" as "more like a glorified, tall cold-frame." Attached to his house, it is 20 inches deep (the width of a double sliding door) with a series of moveable shelves inside, their configurations dependent on the plants they accommodate. All are accessible from John’s wheelchair.

By protecting plants from frost and harsh winds, John extends the southern Ontario growing season from late March into November. John uses the greenhouse to keep his hardy breeding cactus year-round and to start tomato seedlings and flowering plants in late March or early April.

With his greenhouse, "I’m able to stretch my own imagination and intellect by doing unusual things, like developing cactus from seed," John explains.

"Gardening gives me an opportunity to participate in the life cycle of living things; it’s fun and it’s therapy of another kind for me, keeping me physically and mentally active." He sells four to five hundred plants a year on a stand outside his house, making enough cash to offset his costs and allow him to grow the more unusual plants.

His back yard extends beyond the greenhouse. Old iron claw-footed bathtubs and one cement tub with its holes and drain sealed are painted on the outside with rust-proof paint, filled to the top with water and stocked with two or three hundred tadpoles. He grows hardy water lilies and the delicate purple-flowered pickerel weed for them. John is hoping to breed his own toads next year from one of the females.

"The sounds of the toads croaking in the night entice people to come over and see what’s new in my back yard. The toads also mean we don’t have to cut the grass much, nor use insecticides."

John also has vegetable beds, less than four feet across, where he gets down on his knees and reaches out to work, growing tomatoes and a variety of other vegetables that were started in the greenhouse. His scooter runs down the aisles.

John continues to adapt his gardening to his abilities. "I do the necessary and get it done," he says.

Warren and Marsha Reese both gardened in their youth before using wheelchairs. Marsha’s cerebral palsy meant she did a lot of one-handed raking and hoeing back then; rheumatoid arthritis began to affect Warren’s mobility after a life lived largely outdoors. When he came out of his extended hospital stay using a wheelchair, he moved into a supportive housing facility and used his expertise to grow flowers in raised beds.

Now the couple grows everything on a 5-by-30-foot balcony. They are a tolerant couple; their wheelchairs can’t pass each other on the balcony. They offer each other piloting directions to get around the growing things, without any undercurrents of friction.

They watch the gardening program on the weather channel, do some reading and use their past knowledge and experience to guide their efforts.

"We incorporate our own ideas into what we do," says Warren. "We try it and if it doesn’t work, we get rid of it and do something different the next time."

In the gardening store every spring, they make their decisions. Warren carries home a 120-pound bag of soil on his lap, hoists it onto a table at the end of the balcony and divides it to make the soil easier to handle.

The Reeses grow all kinds of squash in a heavy, rubberized, plastic wheelbarrow (an Ames), using their own special soil mixture: The bottom third is filled with styrofoam chips or peanuts. This promotes better drainage and makes containers lighter so they can be moved.

Because the sun, absorbed by the black wall of the apartment building, can drive the temperature up to 120 degrees, they’ve pulled the wheelbarrow and pots as far from the wall as possible. Nonetheless, experience has proven they can grow only vegetables which can withstand the extremes of heat and sun.

Every two weeks, the Reeses use another of their home remedies to fertilize and break up soil clumps in their container garden. Six tea bags are steeped in two gallons of water, to which crystallized fertilizer plus a quarter-cup of No-Name lemon-scented liquid ammonia has been added.

The day I visited, four cucumbers were ripening on the vine and tomatoes hung in clusters of 18 or 20. Several grapefruit trees grown from seed were struggling to survive in containers. These are the only plants the Reeses winter over inside.

Marsha waters the plants carrying two gallons at a time, making 10 to 12 trips every second day. She uses a lipstick brush to ensure they are pollinated, brushing the tomato flowers twice daily very lightly. She also dusts the squash and the cucumbers. Every year the Reeses freeze over 100 tomatoes, which they eat year-round.

"I love to watch something grow and produce. I love to see the plants flower," says Marsha. "Every day things are slightly different - it is always changing."

"Anybody can be a gardener," John Hulley concludes. "You just have to get in there and do it."

(Sarah Yates is a freelance writer living in Winnipeg, Manitoba.)


TEN GARDENING TIPS

- To get started, you need interest and space: a balcony, a sunny shelf, a cold-frame or an outdoor garden. Be realistic about your own abilities. Don’t make your garden too big. Keep it manageable; it can grow with your hobby.

- Plan the garden before you dig. Use graph paper to lay out the plans, marking sunny areas, existing trees and water sources. You will need a close source of water and a tool-storage shelf or shed.

- Consider your tools carefully. Strong plastic trowels may be easier than the heavier metal variety. Extend the rake or hoe with a broom handle to stabilize it. Wrap the handles of your garden tools with foam or sponge, secured with carpet tape, or choose ergonomically sound tools. Gloves provide a better grip on your tools and will also protect your hands. If your grasp is weak, adapt a universal cuff to facilitate your grip on tools. Notch the tools to guide your grip if you have a visual disability. Hang tools on your wheelchair or in the reinforced pockets of an apron. Carry a whistle around your neck in case you get into trouble.

- To prepare your soil, double-dig your beds, adding some peat moss to break up the clots of soil. For container gardening, try the Reeses’ special mixture described in the article. Nearby gardening stores are the best sources of regional information, including which plants will grow best in your climate and garden.

- Before planting, check foliage for bugs with your hands or feet, using a magnifying glass if necessary. Pick them off immediately. A non-chemical spray of water and dish detergent applied twice a day will also kill many pests. If plants remain infected, get rid of them. And don’t compost them - it spreads the problem.

- To broadcast or spread your seeds most effectively, buy seed tape and plant it just below the surface of the soil, or add seeds to a gel medium and dispense from a squeeze bottle.

- Use companion planting for natural pest control. Interplant rows of vegetables with garlic and other members of the onion family, or flowers like the marigold which repel certain bugs.

- Make vegetable beds no wider than four feet, with non-slip paths in between that are wide enough to accommodate a walker or wheelchair.

- If you have a visual disability, use a variety of differently textured surfaces, with small raised surfaces, to mark certain sections of your garden.

- If you experience fatigue, keep chairs in the garden from which you can work or on which you can relax when you’re tired. My husband sits on an ordinary white resin lawn chair to dig a garden, pull weeds or shovel compost.


SENSORY GARDENS

When French Impressionist painter Claude Monet began to lose his sight in the nineteenth century, he still adored his garden. He grew the most opulently coloured bearded irises, plus roses and other flowers whose scent stimulated his memory of past gardens. Today, many scented gardens in North America allow people with visual disabilities to enjoy a variety of plants and flowers.

Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB)
Fragrant Garden
1929 Bayview Ave.
Toronto, Ontario
Phone: (416) 480-7580

San Antonio Botanical Gardens
Garden for the Blind
555 Sunston Pl.
San Antonio, Texas
Phone: (210) 207-3255

Garden for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
1081 Green St.
Iselin, New Jersey
Phone: (732) 283-1796


RECOMMENDED READING

Accessible Gardening: Tips and Techniques for Seniors and the Disabled
By Joann Woy
Stackpole Books, Pennsylvania, 1997

The Able Gardener
By Kathleen Yeomans
Whitecap Books, Vancouver, 1992

Both of these books contain plenty of practical advice about the modifications needed to make gardening an accessible, possible activity for people with a broad range of disabilities, from the modification of gardening tools to the building of raised beds with the right dimensions.

Horticultural as Therapy
By Mitchell L. Hewson
Available from the author at:
HTM, Homewood Health Centre
150 Delhi St.
Guelph, ON N1E 6K9

"There is something magical and curative about the powers of nature as seen in the growth of a plant," says Mitchell Hewson, Canada’s first registered horticultural therapist, who runs a successful therapy program at the Homewood Health Centre in Guelph, Ontario, especially for people with intellectual disabilities.

"Flowers perpetuate themselves, constantly repeating the cycle of life which provides us with the hope of life renewed and a chance to begin again."

The straightforward text of his softcover book is full of information and insights into the establishment of a successful horticultural therapy program. From how to build portable raised beds, to the types of plants that prosper in the vermiculite mixture he uses to make the beds lighter, to a recommendation for tools with short, sturdy handles to make working in raised beds easier from a seated position, Hewson’s advice has proven workable.
-- S.Y.