Accessible Gardening: Planning a Wheelchair Garden, 1 by fancyvan

fancyvan wrote:
Melissa: I have raised beds in my veggie garden - done 3 years ago. They are made from 8" wide spruce boards and although the beds around the outside which are mostly flowers are only 1 board high the others are 2 and 3 boards high so 16 and 24 inches high. The walkways are 24 inches wide - I planned them for 24x30" patio blocks - not too expensive - but the guys doing the work asked to put in cobblestone - at their expense - and it looks great. If you are looking at the need to use a walker or a wheelchair then the walks certainly need to be wide. I designed mine after seeing one for a senior who used a walker - the beds were just wide enough for his sit on walker so he could work either side without having to shift it.
The only thing I would suggest is dont make the beds too long. Mine are 8 and 12 feet long and we had to add 'come alongs' to the 12 foot beds because the weight of the dirt was bowing out the boards.
You could also add a board on the top edge of the bed that was wide enough to sit comfortably or something that would clip to the side to sit on and then be moved. I have a cedar lattice structure at the yard end so there is an entrance between every bed and then I can grow things up the lattice - clematice or morning glories or such. I've also got a little shady seating area in one corner where it would have been difficult to grow anything. It is my favorite spot on a hot summer day!

There are some pics of the garden in my garden diary - not many as I had them taken before i had a digital camera .