Staying Put – Downsizing Your Yard

As the aging-in-place movement gains traction, more and more senior gardeners are choosing that option. This has spawned the term “downsizing-in-place.”

How can you downsize your yard…

Aging-in-place is a movement that helps seniors remain in the home in which they raised their families. The home they love. Contractors are training to remodel homes to meet seniors’ changing needs. Home healthcare organizations are available to provide services to seniors who want to stay put. A first-floor bedroom and bathroom are probably the most important to successful aging-in-place. Other modifications may have to be made to your house to adapt your ability to function alone or with minimal help.

Downsizing-in-place works best if your landscape is mature, which it’ll be if you’ve been in your house for decades. Most mature landscapes require less maintenance. Ongoing maintenance includes lawn mowing. A Riding lawnmower makes this task easy, or you can hire one of the many mowing services in every neighborhood. The only task you should do when your trees need work is to write a check to the arborist you hire.

Perennials & Annuals: Low-Maintenance Solutions

Arguably, the most tiring work you have to do in your landscape is tending to your annuals and perennials. The best adaptive gardening technique for dealing with aggressive perennials is to replace them with shrubs and/or dwarf conifers. Instead of having to dig up your perennials and divide them every year or two, you’ll only have to prune shrubs once a year and dwarf conifers even less. The best adaptive gardening technique for annuals is to grow them only in containers.

Senior Gardening: Less Lifting, More Blooms with Container Annuals

Tending annuals in traditional in-ground beds is time-consuming and can be painful for many senior gardeners. It involves hours on your aging knees or bent over to plant, weed, and deadhead them. The containers you use for annuals may be decorative pots, elevated beds, window boxes, hanging baskets, and anything else you can think of. The only caveat is that containerized plants have to be watered more often than in-ground plants. Don’t plant directly into decorative containers. Rather, buy them or plant them in nursery pots that will fit into the decorative container. That cuts down on heavy lifting. Put the decorative container in place and then slip the nursery pot into place. This works with elevated beds and window boxes, too. If, during the season, a plant dies or becomes unproductive, you can just swap that plant out without disturbing the others. At the end of the season, you can just empty the nursery pot and save it for next season, rather than having to clean out the heavier decorative container. And, you’ll be keeping plastic pots out of a landfill.

From Large Plot to Kitchen Garden: Adapting for Senior Living

If you have a large vegetable garden out in the “back 40,” downsize it to a size that produces only the amount of produce you need to feed your empty nest. Also, move it close to the house – a kitchen garden. Then you only have to step out the back door to harvest tonight’s dinner, rather than trudging out to the former location. This also results in less work tending the garden. Make greater use of containers, including pots, elevated beds, and raised beds, even for your vegetable garden. Elevated beds (those on legs) are preferred to raised beds as you can tend them sitting down. Pots are easy to tend to. You can stand or sit to plant them and then put them on wheeled plant caddies to move around.

Don’t Downsize, Rightsize: Senior Gardening on Your Terms

As you can see, you don’t have to fret about moving from your happy place to a place you dread as aging begins to restrict your activities. You can choose the option that allows you to live your life in the environment you love, whether that’s new or right where you are.

Source: National Garden Bureau