by Debra Karplus

Gardening can become more difficult as we age. Try these affordable options for creating a garden that won’t be quite so physically demanding to maintain.

Planting a backyard garden is a growing activity that offers a great opportunity to save money on food and eat healthier. However, as you age, gardening can be tough on your body and may tempt you to stop the hobby entirely.

Don’t despair because there are some affordable options that make gardening possible even if you have a disability or use a wheelchair for mobility.

Make Your Garden More Accessible

A garden that is more accessible will be easier on your body. At DisabledWorld.com, several simple options are suggested regarding your garden and its location and layout. Benches can add to the aesthetics of a garden area in addition to providing easy seating both while working in the garden and while enjoying its beauty with friends and family. Affordable benches can be found online and at most garden shops and home improvement centers.

If you are planning a garden in a spot that didn’t have one previously, consider sun and shade in relation to large trees in the area, but also locate your garden as near to a water source as possible. This will make using a garden hose and watering your bounty less back-breaking.

What you plant may determine how much work your home garden will require. Annuals crops like tomatoes, lettuce, and dark leafy greens with so many necessary vitamins and minerals are fun to grow. The dark leafy greens are especially easy to grow even in shady conditions and have an extremely long growing season, producing many bushels of these tasty, versatile veggies. Remember to plant some root crops like carrots, radishes, and beets.

However, perennials require less work than annuals as they are planted only one time but produce food to eat year after year. Consider berries like strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries and vegetables like artichokes, asparagus, and rhubarb. Plan carefully where you will plant them.

A raised garden bed is a great way to garden if bending and reaching are simply too tough on you. A raised bed should be 2 to 2.5 feet off the ground. A raised bed can be purchased online or in a garden shop for under $150. As an alternative, you can design, create, and assemble one with exactly the specifications that you desire for a fraction of the price, using scrap lumber that can handle the moisture and cold of winter weather while your garden is “asleep.” There are instructions on the web for building your own raised garden bed.

Use Tools That Make the Tasks of Gardening Easier

If your back aches as you try to cultivate the garden and turn the soil of your garden each season, don’t panic. Many labor-saving tools can be used. Products like the Garden Weasel® that can be found in most any home improvement center or garden shop sell for under $40 and can make small work of tilling the garden.

Also, gardening tools that save your back or even arthritic hands can be purchased via Amazon. Length and design of a gardening tool handle can make the difference between gardening with ease versus gardening with pain or discomfort. If you search using the keywords “garden tools ergonomics,” you will find many choices of hand tools and larger tools that typically earn very positive customer reviews like a four-piece hand toolset that includes a trowel, transplanter, weeder, and cultivator.

With seed packets selling for approximately $3 to $6 each, a garden will more than pay for itself in the amount of food it provides. A small, basically one-time purchase of assorted ergonomically-correct garden tools may be exactly what you need to maintain the momentum of keeping a bountiful garden blossoming each summer.

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Reviewed March 2024

About the Author

Debra is an occupational therapist, accountant, teacher and freelance writer. She is a writer for Advance for Occupational Therapy Practitioners. She also writes for Grand Magazine, has some items (fiction and non fiction) selling on Amazon (Kindle), has written several travel articles for the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette and several articles for freelancewriting.com and volunteers as a money mentor for the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension money mentoring program. Learn more about her at DebraKarplus.blogspot.com.