Raised Garden Beds for Wheel Chair Gardener

[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.

[AdamKDigs]

One suggestion from experience, is to make sure that the bed is draining away from the house on a slope. Water can pool in the back of a garden and damage the foundation or promote pests like moles moving into your lawn over time.

[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.

[Bernie_P]

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

Hi, first of all let me just say how wonderful it is for you and your neighbors to do this for her. I have experienced something like this before. We knew of the technical challenges as well as the physical considerations but it took us quite a while to come up with a suitable solution. We did a bit of research online and came across a similar project done by the Christopher Reeve Foundation. I don’t have the link to that page right now as I’m not using my own laptop so I’ll get back to you with it once I get home. But you can also search on Google for it, type in “gardening for people in wheelchairs” and I think the organization’s page is among the top ones. Hope this helps.