How to Run a Garden Club for Seniors

Posted by Donna Mae Scheib on July 29, 2019

How to Run a Garden Club for Seniors

Garden clubs are a prime example of valuable activities that remain available to us as we age. They provide low-strain exercise and a sense of accomplishment no matter how old we are as we see our efforts literally come to fruition. For seniors, in particular, gardening benefits memory, dexterity, happiness, time management, fitness, learning, and relaxation due to the tranquil and active nature of monitoring and interacting with a garden on a regular basis. In a proper garden club environment, seniors can also have valuable social interactions and make friends.

You can find a garden club at many senior living facilities. Many of them incorporate fruits, vegetables, and herbs grown in the facility’s garden into the kitchen. Still, other garden clubs belong to community groups both religious and secular, include senior activity centers, so they provide ample opportunities to connect with the local community. Most garden clubs include accommodations for seniors’ needs when it comes to tools, tasks, and types of plants to grow and environments in which to grow them. With that in mind, this article will explain how to start, maintain, and benefit from a senior gardening club. The small grassroots effort it takes to start one can sprout into something truly beautiful.

How to Start a Senior Garden Club

If you seek out a garden club already present in a senior living facility or community group, joining can be as easy as signing up. Making a garden club from scratch at a senior living facility requires several extra steps, however. It can convey a sense of accomplishment much in the same way gardening itself does to start the group yourself. Just remember the steps below in order to start the initial pitch successfully.

Setting up a garden club at a senior living facility requires guidance, occasional financial support, and outdoor space from the senior living facility management. Volunteers can also help you plan different meetings based on weather and resident schedules. You can find other residents at regularly scheduled facility meetings and express interest in starting a garden club. Your group might meet once a month or once every two weeks, depending on everyone’s schedules and what you grow.

The next section of this article will discuss how to maintain the garden according to plants’ needs, which involves choosing plants easy to maintain on a relaxed schedule. Even before you start, you should make sure you have the proper area, tools, and interest. The outdoor garden area should be flat, preferably floored with cement or tiles so it can be easy to clean, and far enough from the facility that there is little distracting noise. Fences ensure security while raised beds and benches or chairs ensure easy access. It should be equipped with a water hose, covered work tables, plastic pots, seeds, sandbags, plant cuttings, and potting soil. Tools accessible to residents (including those with arthritis or mobility issues) include garden gloves, pruners, trowels, lightweight shovels, and long-handled rakes. They should be vividly colored for visibility. As far as interest is concerned, starting with six to eight people can ensure the group gets off the ground without having too many people to worry about from the beginning.

How to Garden

With advice from your local community gardening club or written or online resources, you can share a wide range of garden activities. Potted plant activities include growing cherry tomatoes, growing herbs, repotting plants, growing succulents, and making terrariums. Raised bed activities include growing cuttings and seasonal vegetables and flowers. The main advantage of using raised beds is that they require less bending from lower-mobility gardeners; you can always use pots and other containers on accessible surfaces for smaller plants. If you cannot often rely on the weather, indoor gardening can include Spanish moss, potpourri, and bulbs such as hyacinth, amaryllis, and narcissus. You will likely find these plants at a local nursery or from residents’ loved ones when they get to be expensive.

Gardening in a group requires taking everyone’s needs into account; for instance, you can divide a potting task between two low-dexterity residents so that one holds the pot steady and the other performs the gardening work in it. Asking around for more expensive plants will keep your budget secure, but spending extra on good potting mixture will give you your money’s worth –especially if you are planting fruits and vegetables. Growing food can help seniors vary their diets, especially helpful for the many living on a fixed income. The physical work involves digging, watering, raking, and bending, while the mental work involves learning your plants’ specific needs, maintaining them on a schedule, and knowing when vegetables are ripe. The next section of this article discusses the benefits this work provides.

Benefits of Garden Clubs

Garden clubs manage to provide exercise just strenuous enough for most seniors thanks to the aforementioned physical activities. They benefit flexibility, dexterity, mobility, endurance, and vitamin D intake from the sun. The mental labor, on the other hand, benefits attention spans and memory because gardening requires significant patience, time management, and lifelong learning. Topics of learning include individual and general gardening tips, watering schedules and frequency, and environmental and health benefits. The additional element of social interaction allows seniors in garden clubs happiness, relaxation, and emotional stability.

As mentioned, gardening allows seniors access to fruits and vegetables that might otherwise be more expensive to buy. Some seeds can be a cheaper alternative to store-bought foods and even provide more nutrition with the right care. They include strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, tomatoes, lettuce, green beans, spinach, carrots Brussels sprouts, peppers, basil, thyme, and rosemary.

But, perhaps most importantly, garden clubs provide a sense of accomplishment when plants grow, bloom, and seed. They can make residents feel at home and remind them that their efforts pay off, especially when they or the kitchen get to make good use of fruits and vegetables grown in their very own gardens. Garden clubs are an excellent way for us, our community, and the environment to reap the rewards of what we sow.

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