She has a motorized chair, and the container garden on the patio allows her to drive around and gain access to the plants for pruning and watering. Most are in pots (big ones), but she raised several of them with cheap-o cinderblocks from the Home Depot. By turning them on their side so the holes face up, you can use the blocks themselves as pots. She has an artistic eye, and she has worked them into really attractive flowering steps and such at different points on the patio–an affordable version of what someone suggested above.

The trick for her is finding tools she can hold with her arm splint and the small range of movement she has in her hands. She’s found miniature tools work very well (she can slip them into her splint next to her arm to hold them in place), as do long bamboo tweezers, but she has a hard time finding them. (If anyone out there knows where to find them, please e-mail me and let me know.) When she fertilizes on her own, she uses the stick sort that you push into the ground instead of the granular stuff that has to be worked into the dirt. Usually I or another friend will help her trellis plants when necessary, and she has recently started to look into expanding her garden with plants that need less intensive care, such as cacti and succulents.

It’s definitely something you have to work out, but there are many ways for those with disabilities to maintain beautiful gardens. Having help with it every now and again opens up more possibilities for those with high-level disabilities (repotting and trellising are extremely difficult for my friend, for example), but for many people, it is an absolutely radiant addition to their life. I think spending time digging in dirt is therapeutic for everyone, but it can have a special impact for those people who may be restricted from getting out and enjoy all the green and growing world due to transportation issues or attendant care shortfalls. My own friend swears her garden literally saved her life. I would love a special series on this–accessible gardening.

I’ve also seen some gorgeous masonry beds, with either Pyzique stones or something similar, brick, concrete faced with flagstone, or a dry stack stone wall. Pricy, though. Many people with disabilities are on a fixed income so container planting is really the most sensible way to go for most people.

There’s a nursing home in San Francisco that has extensive raised beds like this, and it made my heart sing to see the elderly people, many of whem looked in bad shape, lighting up to have their hands in the soil and be part of nature’s cycles.

Great, great post.