Gardening is a great way to ensure that you have access to healthy food and get some great exercise during the day. It can also be a great way to get some fresh air and relax by doing something you love. However, as you get older, you might find that gardening becomes more and more challenging for you physically. Luckily, there are things you can do to mitigate this.
To help you see how this can be done, here are three tips for making gardening easier for seniors.
Change The Landscape Around The Garden
If you already have a garden at your home, you should look at the landscaping around it and see where there are problem areas that might need to be fixed.
To give you some ideas of what you might need to do, compare your garden to a garden that you might see at a senior living community. At these places, you likely won’t find any steps in the garden area or rows that are too close together. With this in mind, try to make these kinds of landscaping changes to your garden, too. Ask a friend or family member to help you make small slopes rather than stairs and give yourself enough space to safely move around if you need to bring a seat with you or using something like a walker.
Move Your Plants To Raised Beds
Another thing you might want to try is taking your garden from the ground and moving things to raised beds.
Bending down to the ground to tend to the garden can be very challenging for many seniors. So to keep from having to do this, try using raised beds for growing your garden. This way, you won’t have to bend down so low to get to your garden. This can help tremendously for seniors who experience pain in the back, knees, hips, and more.
Keep The Right Tools Handy
Something that many seniors experience is pain and a weakening of their hands. This can make gardening hard because they often can’t use their hand tools the same way they used to. However, you can find more ergonomic tools that will help to make gardening much easier for you.
For those who do experience things like arthritis, you can get garden tools with larger and softer handles. This way, you can get a better grip on the tools and continue working in your garden just as you always have. You can also use things like tape and foam-type materials to alter the handles for the gardening tools you already have if you’d rather go that route.
If you want to keep gardening as you get older despite how your body has changed over the years, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you find ways to make this happen.
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