Gardening can be great exercise, but it can be a challenge if you have arthritis. Learn about tools and techniques to make it easier and protect your joints.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Love to garden, but find that arthritis gets in the way?
All that bending and squatting while you’re planting or pruning can strain already sore joints.
Here are a few tips to make your time in the garden more productive – and less painful.
To avoid bending or kneeling, bring the garden up to meet you.
Ask a friend or professional landscaper to help you install a raised flower bed.
Add a retaining wall around the garden to give you a place to sit while you work.
An even easier option is to build a garden highrise. Place boards between bricks or concrete blocks to act as the floors of your vertical garden. Then set a potted plant on each level.
When choosing which flowers to plant, consider more than just their appearance. Some plants are much easier to care for than others.
Knock out roses and lantana, for example, need very little pruning and watering, but they still add a burst of color to your garden.
Perennial flowers, like lilies, bellflowers, or hostas, will come back each year so you don’t have to replant them.
When digging, pruning, and weeding, use tools with arthritis-friendly features such as easy-grip handles, which absorb some of the impact and protect your joints.
Trowels and hoes with extra-long handles allow you to garden standing straight up.
And special pruners make cutting much easier.
When you need to be down at ground level, kneel on a foam pad to protect your knees.
Instead of carrying water, use a water caddy on wheels.
Or you can buy an easy coil hose that’s lightweight and stretches far enough to reach your garden.
By using a few special tools and techniques in the garden, you can exercise your green thumb without causing added pain to your thumbs, and other joints.