Accessibility is the Focus for Gardening in 2011

Well, I didn’t feed the masses from my garden last summer. The scorching summer Oklahoma heat kind of beat me back inside on too many days, but our local armadillo ate pretty well from the labor of my sweat and aching back! The gophers and deer didn’t do too badly either. Somehow this winter I need to work on fencing or a different set up if I plan to actually HARVEST some of my homegrown veggies. It was still a pleasure to create and work the garden, and I’ll try again this spring, of course.

One of the other pleasures of 2010 was working with my sister to grow and build a new non-profit organization, Whistling Wind, Inc. with the mission of promoting accessible recreation and sport. We had a blast working with the Wings participants to encourage a healthy lifestyle and just have fun together dancing, playing Frisbee, doing yoga, and as many other active games and exercises as we could come up with and get someone to do with us! In 2010 Whistling Wind also sponsored a therapeutic art class at a local elementary school, which was offered free to about 10 participants, due to a generous donation.

This year, I’m excited about Whistling Wind exploring opportunities for accessible gardening! So expect to hear a lot about the subject right here in the coming weeks.

As background material, I’m reading Accessible Gardening for People with Physical Disabilities: A Guide to Methods, Tools and Plants, by Janeen R. Adil, Woodbine House, 1994. I found it by searching Amazon on the topic of accessible gardening and ordered a used copy pretty darn cheap. (Sometimes the used books I order from Amazon come quickly, and sometimes I think the postal system parks them in a back room in Slapout, Oklahoma for weeks at a time, just to encourage me to pay the more expensive shipping next time.)

Here are some great questions for us to consider:

What makes a garden accessible?
What can be done to make an existing garden more accessible?
How can I build accessible features into a new garden?

In this week's blog entries I think we’ll discuss providing access to the garden from the house or parking lot, then explore structures that allow for ease of caring for garden plants for those who have physical limitations. Anything else you would like to research together? Any experience you would like to share on the the topic?

Here’s a great accessible gardening structure from Accessible Gardens.com to get you thinking!