As you get older, you might decide you want to remain in your home and age in place in Paducah, Kentucky. Part of the reason you don't want to leave home is your love of gardening. While you're outdoor doing activities in the garden, you soak up a little sunshine and boost your Vitamin C leaves.
Gardening is also a great way to reduce stress and calm your mind. When you get older, it can become more of a challenge to spend hours on your knees or bending over. If you're caring for an older parent, you worry about them using gardening shears to prune back aggressively growing plants.
Here are a few tips for renovating your garden:
1. Install Standing Garden Beds
The trend of higher, standing garden beds has grown popular and more mainstream in the past few years. Gardening is hard on the back and knees of any gardener, no matter their age. By installing higher gardening beds, you won't need to bend over as much to plant or tend to your flowers and veggies. It's a great way to ease some of the physical labor of gardening.
2. Choose Native Plants
While you enjoy gardening as a hobby, you don't want to devote all of your time keeping plants that weren't intended to grow in Hopkinsville, Kentucky thriving and healthy. Native plants will require less additional watering, and you won't need to worry about them growing too aggressively, such as the way Kudzu takes over any space. You'll find many beautiful options in native plants, flowers, and shrubs.
3. Buy Tools With Longer Handles
To minimize your bending over and stretching to new lengths, you can buy tools that have long handles. This can help you accomplish the same tasks, such as breaking up the dirt with a hoe, without the necessity to lean so far over or for you to kneel on the ground. When you visit a store dedicated to gardening, you can easily find a variety of tools with longer handles to make gardening less physically demanding.
4. Select Plants That Grow Slowly
The old saying "you're growing like a weed" illustrates how quickly some of the plants and shrubs growing in your garden can shoot up. If you're a loved one who's helping their aging parents stay in their home, you worry about them using sharp gardening shears to trim hedges and other plants.
It seems like your folks are always out in the garden trimming something in their Madisonville, Kentucky garden. It's time to replace these fast-growing plants with ones that are less aggressive and require less trimming throughout the year.
5. Invest in a Gardening Cart
From fertilizer to gardening tools, you can find yourself carrying a lot of weight back and forth between your garden and your garage. A garden cart makes it easier to move these items without wearing yourself out.
Your senior loved one doesn't need to give up gardening as they age in place. With a few small changes and some trendy ones, gardening remains an achievable and enjoyable hobby. At Senior Helpers of West Kentucky, we're always ready to help you and your family.