Gardeners Tips

Expert gardeners may have spent more than half a century developing their skills but you are never to old to start, nor are you too old to learn easier and simpler ways to enjoy your gardening.
Bending and kneeling may get a bit harder as you age but there are ways to overcome mobility restrictions like padded kneelers with good handles.

Waterlilies Viewed through my cataracts?

Tools as You Age

• You are not going to double dig acres of ground so get a spade to suit. A small stainless steel blade lifts less but will not over tax the muscles and still get most jobs done at a steady pace. Mud wont get claggy and stick the blade so you only lift it once.
• I have very useful smaller forks and a trowel on long handles. They are easy to obtain and save your back. You can also fashion your own dibbers and gadgets
• A two wheeled barrow is lighter for pushing than a traditional one wheeler.
• Use large pots and containers to reduce watering and put them on casters for moving around or better still leave them in a permanent spot.

The Illustrated Practical Guide to Gardening for Seniors: How to Maintain Your Outside Space with Ease Into Retirement and Beyond by Patty Cassidy from Amazon

Easier Gardening as You Age

• This above book shows how easy it is for seniors to carry on gardening, into and way beyond retirement.
• It looks at different kinds of homes and the gardens they provide, assessing the location, local climate and soil type and evaluating problems such as arthritis and loss of balance.
• The book also outlines the importance of taking care of your body, summarizing the safety issues, what to wear, warm-up exercises and equipment to make the garden easy to access for unsteady feet or wheelchairs.
• Included is a directory that profiles the many planting choices available, each with a difficulty rating and a hardiness category.
• Gardening for Seniors is packed with projects, garden plans and step-by-step sequences.
• Easier gardening will appeal to active gardeners in their early retirement through to those with more limited abilities, showing how, by adapting garden activities and the tools employed, the joy of gardening will remain undiminished.

Plants and Planting as You Age

• Avoid fast growing shrubs that need pruning and regular spraying. I prefer small rhododendrons to roses for this reason.
• Aim at your senses by placing plants where you will get the most reaction from those you still have in full working order.
• Design and implement your gardening to impress others and they will stop and talk.
• Cajole a relative or pay someone to do the heavy yards (landscaping, tree lopping, hedge trimming or whatever you struggle with).
• If all is failing grow indoor plants even resort to cacti

Georg Arends was a German nurseryman who bred many perennial plants. His business was successful until the second world war and has been regenerated to be one of the oldest in Europe. It still remains within the Arends family.

Among over 300 plants that Georg bred are included ‘Arendsii’ versions of Aconitum, Arabis, Phlox and Hosta sieboldiana. He also specialised in Bergenia breeding ‘Abendglocken’, ‘Morgenrote’ and the white flowered ‘Silberlicht’. (I was told Bergenia were called Elephant plants because an elephant could stamp on them and they would survive. However a more popular name is Elephant Ears after the leaves.)

One of Georg’s favourite Berginia (wiki)

Rhododendron ‘Georg Arends’ was named after him. Dobbies say that it forms ‘A spectacular evergreen shrub that produces masses of large bright red flowers in mid May, up to 7.5cm in diameter, on a round shaped and bushy plant with dark green foliage.’

David Austin sells an old rose called Georg Arends which he claims it is ‘A good shrub with large, rose pink blooms of perfect Hybrid Tea shape; the petals curling back at the edges in a most beautiful manner. Deliciously fragrant. Recurrent flowering’.

A recent article in the Financial Times celebrates 130 years of Georg’s nursery business – I wish I had plants that lived a tenth as long.

I may be a bore at parties and barbeques  but I do know how to get rid of slugs. ed.

Gardeners can appear to be a taciturn bunch but they have a dry sense of humus.
‘A tough looking man came and took our garden gate when he thought nobody was looking. Well I thought it best not to say anything as he might take a fence.’

Gardeners Quotes

‘It should be the gardeners aim to provide ideal conditions for his plants so that they can flourish to the limit of their capacity.’

‘A gardener needs to be an intelligent being rather than just a robot.’ Derek Clifford

‘It is important that the grower acquaints them-self with each species’ natural habitat to enable a good pot grown specimen to be produced.’ Jan Taylor Geraniums and Pelargoniums.

‘Years ago, nearly every garden had a patch of Lily of the Valley that flowered year after year.’ Adam the Gardener

‘Gardening requires lots of water – most of it in the form of perspiration.’ Lou Erickson

‘In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death.’ Sam Llewelyn

‘What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.’ Charles Dudley Warner

‘A garden is a thing of beauty and a job for ever.’

‘There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.’ Mirabel Osler

‘Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get’ – Mark Twain

‘Gardening adds years to your life and life to your years.’

‘Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it.’

‘Canny guerrilla gardeners help their plants along and sell their crop giving them the opportunity to invest in new plants and material’. Richard Reynolds On Guerrilla Gardening

‘Keep Calm and Carry on Gardening’

Gardeners Tips Links

• Gardening Quotes
• The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS)
• Alpine Garden Society (AGS)
• BBC Gardening
• See our sister site Gardening Products for tips and ideas on Garden products new and old.
• Thompson & Morgan search for seeds and plants

Another top ten list this time of top ten plant hunters.

Carl Linnaeus is known as the father of taxonomy

Sir Joseph Banks possibly the father of Kew accompanied Captain Cook on HMS Endeavour’s voyage to the South Pacific (1768-1771), was involved with the HMS Bounty and breadfruit and many early plant hunts. He was appointed as a of Kew Gardens by George III in 1773. A Joseph Banks Tribute Garden has been established in Lincolnshire which is now part of the National Gardens scheme. Many plants are now named Banksii as a tribute to his collecting, introducing and organising the Plant Hunting of the 18th century.

William Lobb and his brother Thomas Lobb were prolific plant hunters in the Georgian and Victorian era when new plant introductions were in great demand. South America was the terratory where they collected many trees and species for Veitch the nursery.

George Forrest, 1873 – 1932 was a Scot who collected Rhododendron forrestii, R. sinogrande, R. repens, R. griersonianum, R. intricatum and R. giganteum, as well as more than 50 species of primula. Also introduced were numerous buddleias, anemones, asters, deutzias, conifers, berberis, alliums and cotoneasters and plants that now bear his name including Pleione forrestii, Pieris forrestii, Iris forrestii, Acer forrestii.
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Five years ago I recommended taking gardening at a steady pace, I could have called it slower gardening. Shortly I will give some tips on slower gardening but as a reminder some oak, conifers and other trees come into their own when they are 1000 years old.

Who Are Slower Gardeners

A slower gardener has infinite patience and may be of any age and from any sex. …

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