Raised Garden Beds for Wheel Chair Gardener

[maryjones2]

Hi,

I have a neighbor that is now in a wheel chair. She has a beautiful garden of field flowers and rose bushes. Most of her neighbors have been tending the garden for her, but she's feeling left out because she can't do it herself. She says she's missing playing in the dirt. That I can understand.

A few of the neighbors were wondering if there was a way that maybe the beds can be raised up to chair level where she can roll up to the beds and garden away with everyone? Does anyone have any suggestions of books with landscape diagrams? Has anyone seen something like we have in mind?

DCMerkle

Wow that is a special case. I think it is possible and that will keep her busy and never lonely again. Try to visit your flower store they must have a user friendly raised bed or can help construct one.

[pharmerphil]

we did this for some folks at a care center, the bottoms of the boxes were filled with creek stones, for drainage, we added a solid aluminum bottom angled so the drain hose drained down the outside pillar, back to a reclamation tank, thus recycling the water for all the gardeners to use.

We also installed standard raised wheel chair accessible beds.
the link below is a .pdf file, with the material list, plans and pictures for those
Building Wheelchair Accessible Raised Garden Beds

[thebigtomato]

Those are awesome Phil! What great info to read about. You know what they say, "A community that builds wheelchair accessible gardening beds together stays together" right?

[hewitt12]

How about that... it took a while, and I've been away as well,It's also in some cases with Residential Garden Services but it's great to see this idea get some attention.

[miles.o]

What a wonderful community. I am truly touched just reading about it...

I was trying to read over some sites online, and someone suggested that a table type structure would be the easiest for those in wheelchairs, so they could pull right up to it. I have seen some pictures of raised bed gardens that were on legs.

Anyways, good luck to you. I hope we can see some pictures in the future!

[thebigtomato]

I agree, I would LOVE to see some pictures!

[redknight]

Sorry, I couldn't find out how to start a new thread so I decided to try this.
I am in a wheel chair so I am looking for simple plans for inexpensive home made raised beds. The kind I can put my knees under. We have much community gardening here, so I need simple inexpensive plans. I can imagine such beds ok until I get to the drainage problem. I see bottoms with fair sized holes and plastic screen to keep the soil in.
I saw a link in another post that was supposed to lead to a pdf of such plans, but instead led me to a site called ripway which had no pdf and didn't seem even remotely having to do with gardening. Perhaps someone accidently posted the wrong link.

[ownerbuilder2012]

I agree with everyone here. There's no reason why you can't raise garden beds to suit the required level for person on a wheelchair. It's very nice of you guys to tend her garden for her. I haven't searched by but there should be an article about this. If there's none yet, then someone should write and feature it on the web.

[wendyjames2]

How about considering some hanging baskets? Try to suggest some pathos. They should work well for your neighbor.