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For Master Gardeners
Easy Access Garden
The Easy Access Garden provides a gold mine of ideas to enable all gardeners - those who may be physically limited or not - to find easier ways to garden. Making use of containers and raised beds, this garden demonstrates what can be done to minimize strain brought about by bending, stooping, and kneeling.
Visitors will be struck first by the numerous types of containers and raised beds used to grow mainly vegetables as well as flowering plants. Recycled materials are used predominantly such as the old claw food bathtub overflowing with annuals, recycled brake drums off the wheels of a big truck sporting nodding flower heads, concrete pieces that make a wall around the garden perimeter, an old wine barrel filled with strawberries, straw bales used for potato plantings. Organic compost is used liberally in a number of the beds. Several types of trellising systems - such as a pulley system that can be raised and lowered for easy picking of peas and beans - are also exhibited. Pillar gardening is a method of vertical gardening that creates colorful flower or trailing vegetable columns using less space. Also included is an exhibit featuring a unique layering method of composting called “lasagna gardening” in which various layers of organic materials such as sawdust, manure, shredded paper, grass clippings, etc. are made to enrich soils.
The best time to visit this portion of the garden is the summer months when it is a riot of color as well as producing vegetables, which are subsequently donated to UCAN, our local food bank.
Started in 2005 by Bill Decker, it continues to be a work in progress. Betty Ison designed, planted and maintains the perennial and bulb flower border gracing the perimeter of the garden, and a few other Master Gardener volunteers assist her. A new gazebo with patio paver floor stands front and center. Signage listing plant names and exhibit descriptions are provided as well as some containing Braille lettering.