Stay Gardening Longer: Solutions for Senior Gardeners
There comes a time in every senior gardener’s life when climbing the stairs to the second floor becomes a chore. At the same time, your favorite activity, gardening, is becoming more tiring. Family and friends may be urging you to downsize, but the thought of not gardening at all isn’t an option. You want to keep that green thumb green. You just don’t want to put forth as much of your waning energy doing it. And then there’s the matter of your aching back and creaking knees when you make the hike up that flight of stairs to retire for the night. You’re in luck!
You’re making an important decision about the next stage of your life when there are several choices available, and I’m going to give you the pros and cons of each.
Downsizing – Adapting Your Green Thumb
Downsizing is the traditional term for moving to a smaller living space. However, downsizing isn’t so all-inclusive today. I use the term only about apartments and townhouses.
Apartment Gardening
Apartments are the most restrictive for the gardener. However, gardeners are resourceful people and have found ways to garden in the small space apartments provide. The most obvious gardening for apartment residents is indoor gardening – houseplants, including my favorite: Tillandsia. Some residents grow containerized plants on their balconies.
Remember a few years ago when some houseplants were in short supply at garden centers? That was due to an influx of young professionals to empty office buildings that were repurposed into luxury apartments and warehouses converted into lofts. These “plant parents” stocked up on houseplants to bring the outdoors indoors. And, they even hired people to come in and tend their plants when they were away on business.
Tillandsia (Air Plants) are easy to grow, low maintenance and can be grown in any rightsize environment. These live among potted plants on my plant racks and include my 40-year-old first air plant acquisition (back row, second from left). Others reside in my office in cactus logs and on kitchen window sills.
Townhouse Gardening
If, like me, you don’t like heights, a townhouse may be a better choice. Townhouses may be one or two stories, maybe rentals, condominiums, or fee simple. Rentals are the most carefree. The landlord is responsible for maintaining both the inside and outside. Condo townhouse owners own the inside of their units and are responsible for the inside maintenance. The condo or homeowners’ association (HMO) owns the exterior of the building and the grounds. They make the rules on landscaping or gardens. Most townhouses have a deck or patio on which you can grow containerized plants.
Fee simple means you own your townhouse and any outside area and are responsible for the maintenance, just as you would be with a single-family house. That includes the landscaping and any gardens.
Rightsizing – The Benefits of Rightsizing: A Senior Gardener’s Journey
Rightsizing is really a more appropriate term than downsizing. An apartment or townhouse may be rightsizing for you. However, I’m defining it here as moving to a smaller house and lot. A rightsized house doesn’t even have to be smaller, but it should be on one floor. In 2001, we rightsized from a two-story colonial on a half-acre lot to a customized single-story house on a quarter-acre lot. Both houses are nearly the same number of square feet, but we met our big objective of no second story.
Low-Maintenance Gardening: Rightsizing for Senior Comfort
The biggest difference was the size of the yard. Instead of having to ride around on a lawn mower for an hour and a half every weekend, I could mow with a walk-behind mower in 20 minutes. I’m a woody plant person, so the landscape is mostly trees and shrubs that are now mature enough that they need very little maintenance. Some of the shrubs do have to be pruned when the new growth is finished. As a senior gardener who embraces imperfection, I’ve let the hill in the back go natural. And, I take my own advice by calling an arborist when I need tree work. It’s too dangerous for an octogenarian like me.
If you’ve been in your home for a long time your woody plants (trees and shrubs) should be mature and need little maintenance, which is ideal for downsizing-in-place. Shrubs may need an annual pruning and trees may need occasional work, which is best left to a professional arborist.
Planting your downsized-in-place garden in containers and elevated beds on your patio makes tending and harvesting easier than having to lug supplies and produce back and forth from the back 40. The wheeled elevated bed on the left is made of metal and the bed on the right is plastic.
Townhouse Gardening
If, like me, you don’t like heights, a townhouse may be a better choice. Townhouses may be one or two stories, maybe rentals, condominiums, or fee simple. Rentals are the most carefree. The landlord is responsible for maintaining both the inside and outside. Condo townhouse owners own the inside of their units and are responsible for the inside maintenance. The condo or homeowners’ association (HMO) owns the exterior of the building and the grounds. They make the rules on landscaping or gardens. Most townhouses have a deck or patio on which you can grow containerized plants.
Fee simple means you own your townhouse and any outside area and are responsible for the maintenance, just as you would be with a single-family house. That includes the landscaping and any gardens.
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. You’ve already read my advice on doing your own tree maintenance so you can cross that off your list. 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 that I can offer is that containerized plants have to be watered more often than in-ground plants.
I don’t plant directly into decorative containers. Rather, I 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.
Plant caddies make moving containers easy. They’re available in various materials and sizes.
Slipping plants in nursery pots into your decorative container makes moving, culling, and cleaning easier.
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. I prefer elevated beds (those on legs) to raised beds. 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.
So, don’t be concerned about downsizing when you can plan for the next chapter of your life by rightsizing, regardless of what’s right for you.
“This post is an educational and inspirational service of the National Garden Bureau and our members. Please credit and link to the National Garden Bureau and the author member when using all or part of this article.”
