Gardening has many health and therapeutic benefits for older people, especially when you create an edible garden. Garden beds, equipment and tools can all be modified to create a garden that is interesting, accessible and productive.
Some medical conditions and physical disabilities may restrict or prevent older people from participating in gardening. However with planning and a few changes, you can create a safe, accessible, and pleasant space.
Gardening keeps you fit and healthy
Everyone can benefit from creating an edible garden. Seniors can get particular benefits because gardening:
- Is an enjoyable form of exercise.
- Increases levels of physical activity and maintains mobility and flexibility.
- Encourages use of all motor skills – walking, reaching and bending – through activities such as planting seeds and taking cuttings.
- Improves endurance and strength.
- Helps prevent diseases like osteoporosis.
- Reduces stress levels and promotes relaxation.
- Provides stimulation and interest in nature and the outdoors.
- Improves wellbeing as a result of social interaction.
- Provides nutritious, home-grown produce.
Physical and mental considerations
Some physical, mental and age-related conditions must be considered when older people work in the garden. These include:
- Skin – fragile, thinning skin makes the elderly susceptible to bumps, bruises and sunburn.
- Vision – changes in the eye lens structure, loss of peripheral vision and generally poorer eyesight can restrict activities.
- Mental abilities – mental health, thinking and memory abilities may be affected by dementia and similar conditions.
- Body temperature – susceptibility to temperature changes and tendency to dehydrate or suffer from heat exhaustion are common concerns with outdoor physical activity for older people.
- Skeletal – falls are more common because balance is often not as good. Osteoporosis and arthritis may restrict movement and flexibility.
Changes to equipment, tools and the garden
Garden spaces, tools and equipment can be modified or adapted to help reduce the physical stress associated with gardening. Suggestions include:
- Use vertical planting to make garden beds accessible for planting and harvesting – try using wall and trellis spaces.
- Raise beds to enable people with physical restrictions to avoid bending and stooping.
- Provide retractable hanging baskets, wheelbarrows and containers on castors to make suitable movable and elevated garden beds.
- Find adaptive tools and equipment – these are available from some hardware shops.
- Use foam, tape and plastic tubing to modify existing tools.
- Use lightweight tools that are easier to handle.
- Provide shade areas for working in summer months.
- Have stable chairs and tables to use for comfortable gardening.
- Ensure that there is a tap nearby or consider installing a drip feeder system for easy watering.
- Make sure the toilet is nearby.
Safety in the garden
Here are a few safety tips that older people and their carers should follow.
- Attend to any cuts, bruises or insect bites immediately.
- Take care in the use of power tools.
- Secure gates and fences if memory loss is an issue.
- Ensure that paths and walkways are flat and non-slip.
- Warm up before gardening and encourage frequent breaks.
- Prevent sun exposure by working in the garden early in the morning or late in the day. Wear a hat and apply sunscreen frequently.
- Drink water or juice, and avoid alcohol.
- Wear protective shoes, lightweight comfortable clothes that cover exposed skin, a hat and gardening gloves.
- Store garden equipment safely.
Legionnaire’s disease and gardening
Legionnaire’s disease is sometimes linked to handling potting mixes. Always follow these safety rules:
- Wear a facemask and gloves.
- Do not lean over an open bag of potting mix. This avoids the risk of breathing in spores.
- Moisten contents of potting mix bags when you open them.
- Wash hands with soap and water after handling soil.
Plant selection
An edible garden is a garden that contains flowers, herbs, seeds, berries and other plants that you can eat. You should also consider using varieties of plants that have sensory and textural qualities. Sensory plants include those that have special smell, taste, touch and sight qualities.
Gardening activities
There are many activities associated with cultivating an edible garden that seniors may enjoy. These include:
- Digging
- Planting
- Watering
- Harvesting food and flowers
- Crafts and hobbies associated with plants
- Food preparation.
Where to get help
Community or local garden groups
Local council
Cultivating Community Email: info@cultivatingcommunity.org.au
Occupational Therapists Victoria Tel. (03) 9481 6866
Horticultural Therapy Association of Victoria Tel. (03) 9848 9710.
Things to remember
- Gardening is a healthy, stimulating physical activity that can be enjoyed by seniors.
- The garden, equipment and tools can all be modified to suit the needs of older people.
- Make sure your edible garden is a safe and accessible space.
For more information, visit Better Health Channel.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Words for Seniors Facing Loss by Paula Span
My father is a relentlessly upbeat guy. “Up and around!” he reports when I call. “Keeping busy!” He tells me about his volunteer work, his card game winnings, the (seated) yoga class he enrolled in at the library. His favorite refrain is, “I can’t complain.” (And yes, yes, yes, my sister and I do know how lucky we are.)
He does tell me about the funerals, though. At 87, watching his peers struggle with the physical and psychological trials of old age, he goes to a lot of them. He keeps losing people he’s known for years — onetime co-workers, senior members of his synagogue, neighbors in his tightly knit apartment building.
His friend Molly, too frail in her 90s to remain alone in her house, recently moved to the Midwest to live with her son; they’ll probably never see each other again. The weekly card game now involves an entirely different group of guys than when he started years ago, and it sometimes stalls for several weeks as the players have health crises or move or die. Replacement players are growing harder to find.
“These things keep happening when you’re over 80,” he told me.
He goes to funerals because, he said: “It’s just the right thing to do. It shows that you feel bad, that you’ve lost a friend.”
What do you say to this litany? You want to offer something reassuring, something to lighten the sense of loss, but you can’t evade the reality: He’s outliving his friends and family members. His cohort is thinning.
Luckily, I can turn for counsel to Barbara Moscowitz, senior social worker at the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Senior Health program. (One benefit of writing this blog is that you can call up experts and pose questions, supposedly on behalf of readers, that you really want answered yourself.) Ms. Moscowitz hears such litanies from clients and their adult children all the time.
And her personal guideline is to remove age from the equation and ask yourself how you would respond if the one suffering losses was a peer, not an older person.
“We impose our expectations,” she said.
When old people lose their friends, she added: “We think, ‘You should be able to manage this. This is what happens. You should be used to it.’ Because if we ask what it’s like, we may hear what it’s like. We fear opening the floodgates of sadness.”
But we wouldn’t tell a 55-year-old friend who had attended three funerals in two months to just buck up, would we?
“When there’s been loss, to expect happiness is just denying the truth,” Ms. Moscowitz continued. “It opens up a divide between older people who then deal with the sorrow privately, knowing nobody wants to hear about it, and younger people who want them to be cheerful all the time.”
Of course, some older people don’t want to talk about the illnesses or deaths of their friends or neighbors, either — but in her experience, Ms. Moscowitz said, most do.
“Those people are part of their history, their legacy,” she said. “If we send a message that we don’t want to hear about it, it says: That person is not worth remembering.”
Grief — feeling sad, weepy, temporarily at sea — is different from clinical depression, it’s important to recognize. Grief is a normal response to loss; depression is an illness that’s usually treatable, both in young people and old ones. Symptoms that persist — like appetite loss, sleep problems, loss of interest in normal activities, thoughts of suicide and, in older people, confusion or agitation — are red flags that signal the need for a medical evaluation.
But my father is not depressed. He’s coping with one of the more difficult aspects of a long life. So I listen to the funeral reports and try not to respond by pointing out all the reasons he has to feel fortunate.
I try to remember to say things like: “Ah, that’s so sad. How long had you known this person? What was he like? Do you need help arranging a ride to the funeral home? I’m sorry, Dad. It must be hard. I bet you’ll miss him.”
Read “Words for Seniors Facing Loss” from The New York Times.
Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”
He does tell me about the funerals, though. At 87, watching his peers struggle with the physical and psychological trials of old age, he goes to a lot of them. He keeps losing people he’s known for years — onetime co-workers, senior members of his synagogue, neighbors in his tightly knit apartment building.
His friend Molly, too frail in her 90s to remain alone in her house, recently moved to the Midwest to live with her son; they’ll probably never see each other again. The weekly card game now involves an entirely different group of guys than when he started years ago, and it sometimes stalls for several weeks as the players have health crises or move or die. Replacement players are growing harder to find.
“These things keep happening when you’re over 80,” he told me.
He goes to funerals because, he said: “It’s just the right thing to do. It shows that you feel bad, that you’ve lost a friend.”
What do you say to this litany? You want to offer something reassuring, something to lighten the sense of loss, but you can’t evade the reality: He’s outliving his friends and family members. His cohort is thinning.
Luckily, I can turn for counsel to Barbara Moscowitz, senior social worker at the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Senior Health program. (One benefit of writing this blog is that you can call up experts and pose questions, supposedly on behalf of readers, that you really want answered yourself.) Ms. Moscowitz hears such litanies from clients and their adult children all the time.
And her personal guideline is to remove age from the equation and ask yourself how you would respond if the one suffering losses was a peer, not an older person.
“We impose our expectations,” she said.
When old people lose their friends, she added: “We think, ‘You should be able to manage this. This is what happens. You should be used to it.’ Because if we ask what it’s like, we may hear what it’s like. We fear opening the floodgates of sadness.”
But we wouldn’t tell a 55-year-old friend who had attended three funerals in two months to just buck up, would we?
“When there’s been loss, to expect happiness is just denying the truth,” Ms. Moscowitz continued. “It opens up a divide between older people who then deal with the sorrow privately, knowing nobody wants to hear about it, and younger people who want them to be cheerful all the time.”
Of course, some older people don’t want to talk about the illnesses or deaths of their friends or neighbors, either — but in her experience, Ms. Moscowitz said, most do.
“Those people are part of their history, their legacy,” she said. “If we send a message that we don’t want to hear about it, it says: That person is not worth remembering.”
Grief — feeling sad, weepy, temporarily at sea — is different from clinical depression, it’s important to recognize. Grief is a normal response to loss; depression is an illness that’s usually treatable, both in young people and old ones. Symptoms that persist — like appetite loss, sleep problems, loss of interest in normal activities, thoughts of suicide and, in older people, confusion or agitation — are red flags that signal the need for a medical evaluation.
But my father is not depressed. He’s coping with one of the more difficult aspects of a long life. So I listen to the funeral reports and try not to respond by pointing out all the reasons he has to feel fortunate.
I try to remember to say things like: “Ah, that’s so sad. How long had you known this person? What was he like? Do you need help arranging a ride to the funeral home? I’m sorry, Dad. It must be hard. I bet you’ll miss him.”
Read “Words for Seniors Facing Loss” from The New York Times.
Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
2009 Tax Information for Seniors and Their Families
The following is helpful information for seniors and their families for the 2009 tax season:
Tips for Seniors in Preparing their Taxes
Claiming the Credit for the Elderly or the Disabled
Common Errors Made by Taxpayers 65 and Older
Tips for Seniors in Preparing their Taxes
Claiming the Credit for the Elderly or the Disabled
Common Errors Made by Taxpayers 65 and Older
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