Gardening as you Age - Simple Changes to Make in Your Garden to Stay Safe

Gardening is one of those hobbies that you can do throughout your lifetime- but much like a favorite sport, we find ourselves having to make simple changes in gardening as we age to stay safe.

Gardening keeps you healthy in the mind and body, and can help prolong vitality better than most other activities. It’s been shown that gardening is excellent, gentle exercise that offers cardiovascular strengthening and of course, muscular strengthening. The gentle, low impact physical stress that gardening offers is wonderful, especially for aging bodies. So, even though bodies change, gardening is one hobby that as you get older happens to be far more beneficial than it is harmful.

But that doesn’t mean our bodies can go like they used to. Here are some ways you can make gardening easier on your body as you age, which can help you avoid injury most importantly, but will also help you enjoy more- after all, you’ve earned it!

Extreme temperatures are dangerous for everyone, but as we age our bodies are less able to recover from heat stroke and dehydration as well as our bodies could when we were younger. You may notice an emphasis on shade gardens and moon gardens with the older gardening crowd, and this is because of a natural gravitation away from hard work in the heat. Creating bigger gardens that receive shade and gardens that take advantage of the evenings and nights are a fun challenge for those with experienced green thumbs too. We have a very wide selection of plants that are shade lovers, with more information on creating shade gardens here. 

Consider creating more shade in your garden by planting more trees too. Moon gardens are simply gardens with plants that bloom at night that carry heavy scent, like jasmines and Brugmansia. White flowers gleam in the moonlight too. Moon gardens are also excellent for lesser known pollinators, like moths and bats. Many beautiful moon gardens around the world also use water features as part of their allure. Installing landscape lighting makes gardens and water features magical at night.

Accessibility is important as we age too. At some point, getting around an expansive garden and having the energy to do it all becomes impossible. Focusing on smaller garden beds, especially raised ones on patios, make gardening for those with mobility concerns a possibility. This is a necessity for those who live in assisted living facilities of course, but this is also a consideration if you’re aging at home. 

Patio and container gardening doesn’t have to be limited to annuals and vegetables either. You can create a container or patio garden out of more permanent shrubs and trees easily. Here are some simple container garden ideas that aren’t ordinary container solutions. Using perennials, small trees, and even installing a small water feature using containers is a great start.

And finally, taking a cue from the old art form of Tai Chi (my mom still does this...in her mid 80's)- everything done at a slow, steady pace makes for great results that come in an enjoyable, healthy way. Take your time doing things in the shade. Make lots of wonderful drinks to enjoy as you go along. Pet the cat, watch the butterflies. This is what gardening has always been about!

Plants That Make the Transition from Spring to Summer

Many assume that once the growing season starts, plants are on constant display. If you live in an area where winter brings constant snow and lack of foliage, any live growth might seem like a display and this might be true. But the reality is, there are natural lulls of excitement in most gardens across the country. One time where a lull often occurs is in the late spring and early summer. This is because the plants that explode with growth early on begin to fade in the late spring, while the later season bloomers are still developing for their summer show. But there are some wonderful exceptions.

For a great show and a seamless transition from late spring into summer, try adding some of these plants to your landscape.

·       Roses: Throughout most of the country, roses are wonderful landscape shrubs that really shine in the late spring through the rest of the summer. Many overlook roses for landscape plantings, as roses have gotten a reputation for being difficult to grow and maintain. This just isn’t true for many of the wonderful new landscape-ready roses available now.

o   The Knockout series of roses are a wonderful example. We especially love the double pink Knockout shrub roses. With minimal care, this disease resistant and dense growing shrub will bloom profusely from June until frost, which carries the garden from the spring display into the warm days of summer. We also carry Red, and a bicolor of yellow and white blooming in the series. You can also grab all three colors in our collection at a great price.

o   The Drift series is another disease resistant and landscape ready rose shrub- and at a smaller size, they make a wonderful perennial for the front of the border for easy color that transition from spring into summer seamlessly. Apricot is a lighter pink version of the Drift family and has a more old fashioned appearance. The flowers are more than double, like the old English roses. This color is also harmonious within most landscape schemes and fits in well just about anywhere.

o   If you have a bigger landscape and need some beautiful late spring coverage fast, try a rose from the OSO Easy line. One of the most popular is the super fragrant pink Oso Easy spreader rose. This rose is great to plant on difficult slopes where it can spread out and cover. Spreading to almost 10 feet but with a very short height of less than 2 feet, this is a perfect groundcover choice too. Plus, this rose requires no pruning (every few years some rejuvenation pruning would be good but it’s not a necessity) and is highly resistant to disease. Try mixing this rose among a backdrop of Munstead lavender on a difficult sunny slope, and enjoy the mix of beautiful fragrance from the spring throughout the summer.

o   The Julia Child rose is a wonderful cherry bright yellow heavy petaled rose that is named after the famous chef Julia Child. Much like her life spent bringing Americans the wonderful world of French cooking, this wonderful rose brings home gardens the flavor of exquisite color and performance. Unforgettable, this small to medium-sized shrub is a great performer in the landscape. While many of the great landscape roses we carry spread, the Julia Child rose grows more upright than out, adding another dimension to the landscape that also brings late spring color when early spring fades and carries the landscape into summer.

·       Mentioned above, lavender is a wonderful companion in the garden with roses, and many types of lavender are also excellent for late spring, early summer blooms. In fact, there are several kinds of lavender, all with different bloom times. For example, Mediterranean or French lavenders tend to be earlier spring bloomers and last into the middle of spring. For lavenders that bloom during the transition from spring into summer, look to English lavenders.

o   Hidcote is one example of English lavender that blooms in the late spring and carries what is considered one of the best sources for pure lavender fragrance. Hidcote is grown as a crop where it’s made into oils and other products that are used in bath products, cleaners, natural medicines, perfumes, and other products that require the best lavender scent. In the garden, Hidcote is a smaller growing lavender which is perfect for the front of the perennial border. Its compact growth is excellent for formal edging.

o   Munstead is a larger lavender than Hidcote but carries the same excellent quality in fragrance, and is also perfect for edible use as well as other uses. Try Munstead in a more natural setting that’s dry and drains fast. It’s also highly attractive to bees, making it an essential in the garden.

o   For a more extended bloom time among your lavender plants while enjoying the late spring English types, try our lavender collection. It includes Hidcote, Lavender du Provence, and Lavender Grosso.

·       There are some blooming trees that will put on a great show after the cherries and crabapples have finished. One of the best is the Kousa Dogwood. Happy in areas where it’s a little more shaded, this dogwood brightens up a dark corner with its late spring display of big white blooms. On top of the spring show, its trunk and stem form is a wonderful architectural addition to the landscape, and the fall brings beautiful color of purples and reds. And finally, bright red berries persist into the winter, which feed birds and make the winter landscape merry. A landscape must!

·       And finally, this amazing daylily mix can be grown throughout the country- from the coldest parts of the north down into the warm south. We include a wide range of colors in bloom in this mix which also means a great extension of blooms from these daylilies when planted in a big mass. Starting in late spring and continuing through summer, this mix is very impressive!

There are other plants that make the late spring transition a wonderful one, and we hope you enjoy these suggestions too. Add these to your landscape and you’ll quickly enjoy a long season of constant life and color!