Help for disabled

Hi all. I have a pipe dream here and hope that one of ya'll can give me some ideas. I work with disabled folks. Both mental and physical. I really, really want to introduce them to the joy of gardening but we desperatley need a greenhouse to work in. The main boulding we are in is so very small there just isn't any room for tables and lights not to mention accidentally being knocked over. Very, Very limited budget to work with too. So....here is my question: How could I go about building one if I provoded all the labor? Would the price be better than buying on og the already mades? I really need help with this guys. These people deserve the peace and good feeling plants can give.

Thanks
Tina

Does it have to be a greenhouse? If you're really on a tight budget, it might be easier to just build some raised garden beds and let them grow some veggies and things during warmer weather. Or even Earthboxes or something like that if you don't have a lot of space. You can't do that year-round of course, but the cost would be considerably lower and it would be much easier to DIY it. If you do a greenhouse though...what size are you thinking? It sounds like you would need a pretty big one which will not be an easy DIY project, and even just the materials could get pricy even if your labor is free. Especially if some of the people you're working with are in wheelchairs, it's going to have to be a pretty big greenhouse in order for them to get around easily, particularly if you have more than one person in the greenhouse at a time. I can't help you on building one unfortunately--I bought a premade one and a fairly small one at that!

i think mine is a 10'X12' green house,my hubby built it for me we only had 150.00 in it we used pvc pipe and blocks it was easy to make
here is some ideas
http://www.pvcplans.com/pvc-greenhouse.htm
http://www.pvcplans.com/
http://westsidegardener.com/howto/hoophouse.html
http://www.laspilitas.com/garden/howto/greenhouse.html
http://www.bluegrassgardens.com/how_to_build_a_greenhouse_article001.html
i hope this helps
enjoy!!!!!!!

Is there any way you can do some fund raising for this project? For example, write to some local churches to be considered for their mission funding work? Most are going to get ready to do their 2008 budget, and will have money designated in a fund for such wonderful uses.
I actually attend a church which has a mission to the poor, and disabled (mental illness, developmental) and physically disabled. Actually, we are our own mission and these people are our congregation. Myself and another woman run a greenhouse program for 10 of our congregants two mornings a week.
Considerations are if you plan to have it heated and vented - and it is expensive to run the greenhouse this way. However, you'd need to protect any plants with winter gardening from frost. So that is something to consider.
You need to be able to put your greenhouse on a pad. I suggest for your population that you have a poured cement pad that is ramped so that people with poor gait can get in and out. Then you can also set chairs down, and sweep up spilled soil easily.
Start to see if you will have interested volunteers to help you errect a greenhouse. Eagle Scouts, men's church groups, college or university groups who can volunteer. I have all of these groups volunteering for us on and off. I'll put sessions together when we need something done so that I may have two different groups on two days working on the same project etc. Our city also has a special volunteer day once a year. We were added to the list this past year and got a ton of work done.
If you need tools to errect, try and get people to bring them, or let you all borrow them. We have a tool bank, but then again, we're in a large city.

Just some things to consider. It can be done, but you need to make sure you can do it within your means.

Good luck to you!

girlgroupgirl

If you have an existing building that you help these people in, have you considered creating a grow room with artificial lighting. It would be far cheaper to start in this manner than building a greenhouse. If you wanted to grow lower light plants, you could use plain old shop lights with warm and cool tubes. If your budget and knowledge is sufficient, you could use HID lights or T-5s and even get into hydroponics. Really the sky is the limit with what can be done inside now without a greenhouse. Just ask the thousands of indoor Marijuana growers across the U.S.

Doug

I volunteer with the differently abled as well as with seniors. I have a greenhouse on my property that is handicap accessible and the work stations within were all chosen for accessibility and special ordered to ensure they would be built to specifications. ecrane has identified some of the issues above should you choose this route. Handicap accessible greenhouses are not cheap and you begin getting a feel for associated costs the moment excavation of the site begins. Framing out the foundation and pouring concrete to provide a level surface for differently abled is the next eye opener or should I say checkbook opener. This is doable, however it's going to take a lot of planning and legwork tracking down funding if you're not in a position to provide more than physical labor. I believe you would have considerably better luck with funding if you chose a site to construct such a greenhouse that wasn't on your personal property.

Raised garden beds would most assuredly provide you with more bang for your buck. I've got photographs of some very functional raised beds that I would be willing to share with you if you are interested. Raised beds can easily be integrated into a landscape design so they look as if they belong. I like them because they provide both function and form however there will be cost associated with providing access to the raised beds. One nice feature about the raised beds is the social component. If they are designed properly, several people can be working in the same raised bed at the same time and some pretty stimulating dialog occurs when people are happily in up to their elbows in dirt!

I'm not familiar with earthboxes per se. Maybe I am and don't know it because we're referring to them as something else up my way. Would love to hear more about these. ecrane?

Hoya_24 has touched on an extremely viable "fix". The sky truly is the limit when it comes to what can be grown inside these days. You'd be surprised how far shop lights can go when paired with some high quality Mylyn.

Here's a link with info about Earthboxes--they're basically a fancy system of self-watering planters. http://www.earthbox.com/consumer/ They could be placed up on benches or something to raise them to the right level to work with, and they make growing things like veggies really easy, so for people who are just learning about plants and gardening they could be a great solution.

Ohhhhh, very nice indeedy ecrane! How do you dig up all these goodies all the time! Great find! I will forward that link onto an activities director who is going to be be launching some programming for residents of a memory care unit. I love it and I think she will too! Particularly desirable for a memory care unit where many of the residents suffer from Alzheimer's and frequently forget to water their plants or forget that they already watered their plants and drown them out.

The miracles of Google! There are other companies that make similar things to the Earthbox, but from what I've read in various threads around here, there seems to be something special about the Earthboxes that makes them better than the knock-offs, so I'd spend the extra money and get the real thing. If you go over to the container gardening forum I know EB's have been discussed a ton of times over there, so if your director wants more info that's a good place to find people who've used them.

I already sent her the link. She's not a member here at DG so she wouldn't be able to read any of the threads over there. The Director to this particular care facility marches to a different drum and thinks out of the box so I suspect she'll pick up on the potential with this product. I really like her style. If she feels these earthboxes would be of benefit and can be worked into programming, the residents will get them. They have a budget and are encouraged to use every last dollar toward programming for the residents. Great find ecrane!

Oh, I shouldn't get any credit for finding them--only reason I know about them is because people post about them all the time on the container forum! Otherwise I would have never heard of them either!

I've had Earth Boxes for years, ecrane3, and have been totally happy with them. But two friends of mine hate them. They refused to follow the instructions that came with the boxes (one thought he knew a better way to fertilize, and one didn't see any need for the "ugly plastic soil cover", so she threw it out). Both pretty essential to making the system work, imho. My "ugly plastic soil cover" gave up the ghost after 3 years, so I switched to covering the top of the box with tin foil. Has worked fine for the past 2 years...