Feeling ‘in charge’

September 12, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Circular pathway allows gardener to maneuver

McClatchy Newspapers

NEWPORT NEWS, Va.

Doris Dodd maneuvers her wheelchair from the kitchen, through the garage and into the side yard of her home in Williamsburg, Va.

There, she tends to an herb garden created in a 9-foot circular pattern.

The garden’s raised design and encircling walkway make it easy for her to harvest the herbs that she cooks with and dries for later use. A 40-year-old yellow Peace rose from her father’s garden is planted in the center; rosemary, garlic chives, thyme and basil grow around it. Mint is planted in a pot and sunk in the ground to keep it from invading everything.

“I really enjoy being out there,” says Dodd, 70, who was permanently injured in a 1970 auto accident in New Jersey, where she lived at the time.

“The herb garden has done very well in this spot. I have cut so much rosemary that I share it with our neighbors.”

Husband Jim, also 70, is the diehard gardener in the household, growing vegetables for the dinner table, sowing wildflowers to attract beneficial wildlife, planting junipers to prevent erosion and always working to perfect his bonsai specimens.

Dodd does her part, watching and admiring his work from a perch built into the deck that overlooks the back yard.

“The herb garden is something mom can really invest herself in,” says their son Doug. “Mom is a two-time cancer survivor battling her third fight now. Maintaining a good quality of life through all of this requires having meaning for your days.”

The Dodds, who find great meaning and purpose in their gardens, are good examples of what gardening can do for you as you age or if you have limited mobility at any point of life, according to experts speaking at the upcoming “Healing Thru Gardening” symposium in Williamsburg, Va.

“Gardening is a wonderful exercise for both body and mind, gives great satisfaction and is quite enabling, which makes it so perfect a venue for special-needs populations,” says Barbara Gustafson, a master gardener who started a therapeutic gardening project in 1999.

Even in an assisted-living atmosphere, a person can feel “in charge” when he or she plants a seedling, nurses it into maturity and reaps the rewards of the harvest.

Garden catalogs are showing more and more mobile containers in many varieties. For instance, if you are sensitive to the sun, the garden can be wheeled into the shade to work on, and then moved into necessary sun to grow.

“I have experimented with kneeling platforms that help aging knees work and mobile ‘weeding chairs’ that help your back ache less. Tools with wider handles or longer arms that save the wrist are also becoming widely available.”

What you choose to grow is just as important, says Gustafson. For example, aromatic plants that you enjoy touching and tasting make you feel good.

“Just working in the midst of fragrant herbs can be relaxing,” says master gardener Linda Lucas. “Culinary herbs can spark up your meals with new flavors and are healthier for you than seasoning with salt.”

Plants that attract wildlife like butterflies are also therapeutic, according to Diane Relf, professor emeritus from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. A founding member of the American Horticultural Therapy Association (www.ahta.org), Relf lectures nationally and internationally, hoping to encourage children, families, working households and retirees to garden for better health.

Gardening can even help you dig your way out of depression, according to mental health experts.

“Gardening can help reduce many of today’s stressors, provides parents a means of nurturing that does not talk back, produces food and flowers to feed the body and soul at very little costs in these hard economic times and provides positive social interaction,” she says.

“Keep the garden as small as will meet your needs. Share the garden, its products and its labor — ask for help when you need it — and be sure to take time to ‘smell the roses.’”