Handicapped Gardening

Someone asked me the other day, “Do you have any garden bed designs for the handicapped?” I thought about it for a while and I decided that I had to adjust my thinking. I was visualizing a raised bed garden on some sort of platform or table that would be easily accessible. I then realized that once the plants started to grow, especially on a trellis bed, the work would quickly be out of reach.

I looked at a trellis bed and asked myself about what is actually required for this new style of organic garden. Once the bed is built, there’s no digging or tilling. Since the soil is weedless, there’s no weeding. The only work required is planting seeds, which requires a bit of bending down, and watering, which can be done from any height using a water wand. There’s very little tending of the plants short of some pruning of tomatoes and such until harvest time, which is done at chest or eye level. My answer is that because there is so little work involved with weedless raised or trellis beds, almost anyone, even with some handicaps, can be a successful gardener.