Subject: Disabled gardening (was separating rec.gardens)

From: [email-masked]
Date: 31 Mar 95 20:35:51 -0600

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (CT) writes:
//snip//
>  In fact, I have to almost 
> "vicariously garden" because I have lots of back pain. (hands & knees 
> gardener).

AHA!  Another one of the bad knees/bad back/bad___ crowd!  You may
be interested in looking at a couple of books on "gardening
for the disabled".  I have Kathleen Yeoman's 1992 _Able Gardener_,
and I've paged through Rothert's 1994 _Enabling garden_.

Lots of ways to adapt tools and techniques to those of us with the
creaky-groanies, or worse.

One thing I know, the next garden I design will have lots of raised
beds, since both my SO and I had polio, and neither one of us bends
really well anymore.  And I use lots of mulch to cut down on weeding,
rarely dig with anything bigger than a teaspoon if I can help it, and
hire some of the worst of the physical labor done.  But I doubt
I'll ever quit gardening.  Even if it's just a pothos on the windowsill...

So, those of us who are no longer TABs (the Temporarily Able Bodied):
What modifications do you make to make life in the garden easier for
yourself?  Let's start a list, to go along with the kneeling
benches and kneepads of an earlier thread!

The strangest looking thing I probably ever did was to put a webbing
belt around an extension ladder that I leaned against the house.  Then
I stood between ladder and house, with the belt around me, and leaned
forward.  That way, I could lean over without bending my back and
knees.  Got about 120 feet of perennial border planted that way!
I'm *SURE* the neighbors thought I was nuts!

Kay Klier  [email-masked]