Garden Design for Visually Impaired Gardeners

Some basic guidelines and useful tips for designing gardens for visually impaired people.

The great difficulty for visually impaired people in gardening, as in other aspects of life, is that of orientation: knowing where you are, what part of the garden you have already worked on and where you are going. As an aid to orientation, the garden can be laid out with straight edges and right angles. Right angles for garden layout can be used with other aids and techniques in carrying out many gardening jobs.

Special design points to remember:

• the plan should be simple, avoiding curves and intricate patterns.
• borders should be no more than 120 cm (4') wide if accessible from both sides, half that if accessible from one side only.
• Landmarks or reference points should be used to assist orientation.

These can be:

• shrubs, trees, scented or tactile plants, ornaments and furniture;
• sound items, including rustling plants, running water and wind chimes;
• path materials such as gravel and bark.

These reference points must be used with the following guidelines:

• use plants that are easy to maintain e.g. require little pruning.
• plants should not overhang pathways and should generally be thornless.
• scented plants should be used sparingly - as a mass of scent could confuse, and hinder orientation.
• ornaments and seating should be recessed from pathways.
• use vivid colours and bold materials as reference points for people with partial sight.
• use changes of texture in paths to indicate changes in direction.
• raised edging alongside the path can help to identify the proximity of a border or other garden features.
• avoid steps if possible - a slope is better; if steps are unavoidable, provide a handrail.

A specially designed garden is the rarely found ideal. Nevertheless, each visually impaired person's garden should be based on simplicity of design for ease of use while remaining visually attractive.

Seeking advice and even help from sighted gardeners may at times prove necessary and valuable: and it might be wise, if the situation allows, to undertake only part of the garden until confidence is gained. It is advisable for gardeners with poor sight to avoid sowing seeds in the open ground. Instead, seed should be sown in seed trays or other containers and the resulting plants planted out at an early stage. This has a number of benefits:

• it avoids wastage of often valuable seed;
• it avoids the difficulties of weeding and thinning out;
• it ensures that individual plants can be planted out at the right distance for future cultivation;
• seed can be sown individually in small pots, or in seed trays containing 'modular'cells - readily available modular inserts for seed trays.

Later, seed trays or pots can be re-used, for rooting softwood cuttings.

With outdoor work, a wooden or plastic right-angled aid can be used both to cultivate the ground and for planting. With planting, try using a length of string that has been knotted at regular intervals. When this is pegged down, the knots can be used for accurate spacing of plants.

Always make sure that the work you carry out in the garden is well organised. Rather than using a traditional area for vegetables, with long rows stretching across the ground, try dividing the area into small beds 1 m x 1 m (or 1 yd by 1 yd). Each small plot can be planted with one crop and this makes it easier to identify weeds and carry out other cultivation.

Reproduced by kind permission of Thrive