Are you getting older, or dealing with a chronic illness? Is arthritis setting in, making it harder to kneel and get back up? Are you just too busy, too tired, or finding that life has simply gotten in the way?
Or, did you break seven bones in your foot, ankle, and leg? I did, and I paid the price. Sadly, so did my garden.
When Life Brings You To A Halt
Four years ago my garden was beautiful, but not anymore. It’s now just a paddock full of weeds.
I live on acreage in south-west Victoria, a cool temperate climate, which is a bit tricky and very weather dependent. I feel like the seasons here have shifted a month or more. So when I see growers, even in Melbourne 4 hours away displaying their blooms while my plants are still seedlings, I take comfort in knowing my garden is growing at its own pace, in its own climate and that takes the pressure off.
Reducing pressure in other ways has been what got me through a very painful experience. Month after month, for the whole year following my injury, I looked out the window from my recliner and helplessly watched the weeds take over my beautiful garden. Seeing thistles instead of foxgloves and roses was depressing.
The weeds got so tall, I could no longer see cars pull up at the front gate.
Shifting Focus To What You Can Do
I knew I couldn’t do anything about it. My doctor told me it would be at least 4 years of healing before I saw any real improvement. So for the past two years I switched my focus from doing what I couldn’t do, to what I could do.
I couldn’t walk far so we moved an outdoor table and chair just outside the front door under cover so I could potter even if it was raining. There, I slowly sowed flower seeds - hundreds of them, all year throughout the seasons. I grew snapdragons, cosmos, zinnias, sunflowers, ranunculus, sweet peas, stock, sweet William, cornflowers, larkspur, nigella, strawflowers and scabiosa.
I raised them in trays on windowsills and on heat mats under lights in my laundry and bathroom. I used a cheap shoe rack with several shelves and cable-tied cheap LED lights under each shelf.
The seedlings were strengthened with a little fan to begin with and then moved outside, back onto the sheltered table where I had first sown them.
Resilience In The Face Of Setbacks
Because of possum and wallaby pressure, we built a small, inexpensive plastic hothouse just a 30-second walk from the front door which kept the seedlings safe from the marauding wildlife. Unfortunately, however, not safe from the strong south-westerly winds we encounter in south-western Victoria. The whole structure collapsed and I cried seeing all my upturned trays of precious tiny seedlings sprawled all over the ground.
Thankfully I had more seed and just started over and I rescued some of the zinnia and cosmos seedlings, which proved to be resilient little things.
They showed me it’s ok to fall over (literally) so long as you can get put back together again. My surgeon reconstructed my foot, just as I was reconstructing the seedling tray.
Ultimately, there was no hope for the little greenhouse. So I spent $200 and got a 3m x 4m metal one. I ditched the plastic altogether and covered this new one with a wind-friendly, white shade cloth, and boy did we anchor it down!
In the shade house, to reduce bending, I used upside-down milk crates to put my bigger pots on and plastic tables to put my trays on which allow me to sit on a chair and tend to them easily.
Gardening Smarter, Not Harder
When the seedlings are strong enough, I transplant them into wicking beds at my daughter’s micro cut-flower farm, which is just behind her indoor plant shop, around 10 minutes from home.
The beds are brilliant as I can sit to transplant, weed, fertilise, pinch, put up supports etc. as I am unable to kneel after two knee surgeries 40 years ago, in-ground growing is simply out of the question for me.
As we are in the Western District volcanic plains, the soil is magnificent, but digging is a nightmare and it's simply impossible for me to shovel rocks and boulders. So having the option of wicking beds is great, as I don’t even have to walk or stand to water them. The automatic system does that for me!
My most helpful piece of equipment has been my little trolley seat. The seat swivels so I can manoeuvre in close to garden beds, the seat can also go higher or lower, and it even has storage underneath - plus a little basket where I keep my secateurs and whatever else I need for the job at hand, I just shuffle myself along seated. I occasionally use it to carry a tray of seedlings, but I don’t recommend that on uneven ground.
Bags of potting mix fare much better! I bought a terrific scoop with a handle for potting mix and a plastic potting tray that has been so helpful in containing my mess, meaning less cleanup for me.
Another brilliant purchase was a battery-operated spray bottle. I have two 2L bottles and a 1L bottle. They save me walking back and forth to the tap, or trying to find annoying kinks in the hose. They also save me lugging around heavy, uncooperative hoses which are a trip hazard for me. I keep all my sowing and propagation tools on the sowing table and have all my pots, labels, trays and potting mix at arm’s reach.
I can’t mow any more so instead of mowing at the shop we put cardboard, weed-mat and a thick layer of wood chips over the weeds. Garden smart, not hard, I say.
I have chairs all over the garden, at the shop, and at home so I can rest wherever and whenever I need to. A quick 5-minute sit-down and I’m good to go again!
I have secateurs, stakes, twist ties and my spray bottles stashed in different garden areas so I don’t have to walk back and forth constantly. I also have huge black plastic nursery pots outside of each shade house so I can dump my prunings then and there.
Healing, One Seed At A Time
I put another table under a silky oak tree where I pot up my seedlings. It’s a lovely shady spot in summer, but not so good in winter.
We recently erected a small tin shed near the house so I don’t have to walk far to access my other tools, stakes, trays, fertilisers and treatments. Now that I can walk a little further and have ditched the walking stick, I reclaimed the entrance to the front door and moved all the seed sowing into this new potting shed. I need to get a solar light in there soon before I start all my summer seed sowing.
My dream would be to have a quintessential English glasshouse to provide protection and warmth to the plants, and to my arthritic body! My mother used to say she planned on converting the old FE Holden to a hothouse, where she could sit and knit amongst her plants and be nice and warm. I don’t have her car, but I do have a collection of old glass doors and windows that might do the trick one day!
I love gardening and I’m so happy to get back out there albeit in a different capacity. Bit by bit, step by step, I focus on one job at a time. The hardest lesson is to learn to listen to your body and knowing when to stop for the day.
My physical rehabilitation has definitely been rooted in the garden, as has my mental rehabilitation.
Sowing seeds has been particularly therapeutic, as they hold so much hope, beauty and healing.
Article & Photographs by Heather Vafidis
