Ask a Master Gardener: Don’t Let Years Steal Your Garden

Container Garden by Brenda Bolton

By: Brenda Bolton, Mobile County Master Gardener | www.mobilecountymastergardeners.org 

All gardeners who are fortunate enough to become old-age gardeners reach the point when going out to your garden overwhelms you.  With a few helpful adjustments, you can continue to love your garden.

Senior gardening requires conscious body and mind conditioning.  Warm up slowly to spring’s work demands, walk as much as you can the months before, do safe stretches, hydrate, and, most importantly, follow the 20-20-20 rule:  rotate garden tasks every 20 minutes to avoid overtaxing the same joints and muscle groups!  Also, give yourself permission to ask for (or hire) help.

Invest in helpful, age-appropriate, assistive gardening implements:  padded garden seats from which to work, knee pads, a quad (4-pronged) cane for safe bending and rising, ratchet cutting tools to reduce hand and arm demands, lightweight electric or battery tools (being careful!), long-handled tools to reduce stooping or stretching, an auger to make short work of small holes and bulb planting, a trenching shovel to make easier work of digging small holes.  Avoid ladders!  Consider a lightweight 4-step platform ladder with wide steps, side safety bars, and a full-sized top platform step, also with safety bar(s). 

Simplify, Prioritize, Select:  Instead of letting your entire yard overwhelm you, think in terms of manageable sections.  As an example, a logical first step is the front entry.  Replace high maintenance formal plantings with a relaxed, natural design of low or dwarf shrubs to reduce or eliminate pruning and perennial care.  You may need to hire someone to remove existing and install new shrubs, but it will be worth the investment to stay engaged with your garden. 

Select two shrub sizes of differing textures, taller for back of bed (check mature height), lower in front to define the space.   A third layer of a low border grass is optional to complete the bed line. For variety, consider blooming shrubs: small gardenias, repeat-blooming dwarf azaleas, feathery Soft Caress mahonia with its bright yellow flower spikes, or shrubs with colorful or shining foliage such as dwarf Distylium.  Always check your site against the plants’ sun, soil, and water requirements.

The front door is perfect for colorful and easy containers of mixed seasonal plants.  Find a local source for easy-to-carry bags of potting soil.  Compare the effort required to dig in soft potting soil with a hand tool to digging in the ground with a shovel. Throughout the garden, replace demanding ground level garden beds requiring bending, stooping and weeding with other options:   perhaps a small holly or Japanese maple surrounded by a container garden set on pine straw.  By using large mixed-plant containers of varying heights, you can achieve a pleasing, layered effect. Fill in a fairly large planting bed with a smaller number of annuals, perennials, grasses and ferns than a ground bed demands.  Add a drip irrigation system to finalize your low maintenance goal. 

Select plants with similar sun and water requirements while offering a variety of colors and textures.  Alternatives to container gardens include mass plantings of low maintenance Green Goddess liriope, autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora), or Japanese plum yew (Cephalotaxus harringtonia v. Prostrata).

If you enjoy vegetables or blooms, plan a pocket garden tucked into a sunny corner of the back yard for a small vegetable garden or perennials and annuals to attract pollinators.  Have upright trellises or arbors installed for easily staking tomatoes or supporting cucumbers, okra, vining veggies or ornamental vines.  Harvesting and checking for bugs and disease are easier done vertically than stooping to ground level.  Or use raised bed boxes to garden without bending, especially useful for vegetables and herbs. 

For large expanses in the yard, select a perimeter border of low maintenance upright shrubs such as Podocarpus maki, Camellia sasanqua, holly, or even a sunny fence covered in star jasmine.  Layer a lower shrub of contrasting texture or color in front. These are all low maintenance ideas to create a softly layered border with variety and blooms.  Add weed- suppressing pine straw covering a layer of environmentally friendly newspaper for a finished look.  If your property size allows, plant a maintenance-free live oak in a corner away from structures, surrounded by mulch in winter and trouble free, perennial southern shield fern in summer.  Trees are easy and bring years of enjoyment watching the wildlife they support. 

Keep Gardening!

Mixed shade container of Acuba, Hosta, Autumn Fern, Carex Grass by Brenda Bolton

Mixed container of Fountain Grass, Dragon Wing Begonia Miss Muffet Caladium by Brenda Bolton

Shrub Border of Sasanqua and Grey Owl Juniper surround a Crepe Myrtle by Brenda Bolton