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Gene Rothert's The Enabling Garden
Yearbook 1996 page 28 By: Joe Bryant, a book review Back to the web versionHow about a vertical wall of spinach and lettuce, within easy reach of someone in a wheelchair? Or, if you're not into veggies, how about a vertical flower garden? Sounds strange but Gene Rothert shows us how to do it in this very enabling book.
Gene Rothert is a paraplegic horticulturist among whose duties at the Chicago Botanic Garden is overseeing the Enabling Garden for People with Disabilities. He was an enthusiastic gardener before becoming disabled and has since become a leading exponent of gardening as therapy. He is currently president of the American Horticultural Therapy Association and manager, Urban Horticulture at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
His book is based on many years of his own experience, augmented by ideas and advice from many sources. It is aimed at all who experience physical limitations, either temporary or permanent, including those experiencing limitations induced by age. He describes how, with adequate planning, gardening can remain an enjoyable occupation long past the point at which it would have been impossible or at least very difficult with traditional techniques. Walkways can be constructed to support a wheelchair or to guide a person with limited vision.
Various kinds of raised beds and specially adapted tools bring plants within reach. Watering systems, simple or elaborate, can enable the gardener with disabilities to tend to the needs of growing plants. There are many helpful ideas on what to grow in various locations and how to plan for plant progressions so that as abilities decline, as they will for all of us, the gardener can tailor effort to ability. There is also a very helpful chapter on what information is needed for designing your own enabling garden.
Many simple line drawings illustrate examples of the ideas presented. More elaborate drawings by a Landscape Architect illustrate examples of a garden designed for a visually impaired person and for a wheelchair user.
There are many useful gardening tips and many "Sources of Help", including names of organizations, lists of books and magazines and sources of tools and equipment specially adapted for gardeners with disabilities. Almost all the references are to American sources but a few Canadian ones are also included.
The book is appropriately sub-titled, "A Guide to Lifelong Gardening."
(HTR, Taylor Publishing company, Dallas, Texas)
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