Bedford Area Master Gardener Phyllis Turner is featured in this AARP article! Phyllis has a wealth of knowledge on this topic and has offered presentations and written fact sheets to help educate people on strategies they can employ to lessen the physical strain of gardening on their bodies.
Karen Beauchemin calls gardening her therapy. Widowed seven months before the pandemic began, she’s spent a lot of time in her West Yarmouth, Massachusetts, garden this year, tending to her vegetables and flowers from her perch on “my little bench.”
That bench is actually a rolling garden seat that wheels around her raised beds and allows her to comfortably get down, and stay at, plant level.
“Everything seems to have grown this year,” says Beauchemin, 72. “I don’t know whether it’s the weather. … Maybe it was my being out there talking to [the plants] all the time.”
Gardening should be fun, not back breaking. So, like Beauchemin, invest in the tools that make it an easier and safer activity as you age. Those tools are often simple and inexpensive — or things you can adapt yourself. CONTINUE
