Horticultural Therapy : Strategies to Prevent Injury and to Minimise Labour in the Garden

Terms like "busting a gut" and "breaking your back" should not come into the equation if you understand how to conduct yourself in the garden.
Working to your capability and degree of mobility
Many horticultural tasks are often physical in action, involving the use of muscles of the back and limbs. Try these strategies:
Do a few warming up exercises.
Always adopt best posture when working - no excessive stretching, bending and turning.
When digging keep your shoulders, hips and feet moving smoothly in the same direction treating your body and shovel as one.
When lifting soil, let your lead foot carry your body forward towards the load, with the shovel close by your side. To move the soil to the left, pivot on the left on the ball of your right foot and point your left foot in the direction you wish to deposit the load.
If it is necessary to lift, correct methods should be used to avoid back injury (i.e. bend knees, keep back straight, keep load to one side of the body (divide the load), and do not twist or move suddenly when carrying. ) Adopt a similar action when picking up tools from the ground. Bend from the knees (and straighten up from the knees as well) and don’t bend from the waist. For better balance, keep one foot a little in front of the other.
Make maximum use of levers. Raking, for example, incorporates the principle of levers. The rake head is the load, your feet the fulcrum. Two alternatives can improve one’s performance in raking: (1) lightening the rake head to lessen the load, or (2) lengthening the lever or handle to improve the leverage. When raking, most of the effort is placed on the back, with one often leaning forward and using one’s back to extend the handle. To transfer much of the energy from the back to the arms and legs, rake from the side to the centre of the body with a gentle pulling action. People suffering from back strain, should practice working side on to their work, rather than as if they were facing the work. Prevent yourself from raking to the front of the body or stretching your back to extend the rake’s range. Move the legs to rake further afield rather than extend your arms.
Where there is work to be done at bench height, consider putting one foot up on a small stool or box as this causes the back and thigh to form an angle of about 135 degrees and minimizes stress on the back. Work benches need to be built to the correct height, usually 50-100cm below the height of the elbow, to reduce bending. Similarly, seating for working should be comfortable to reduce the strain of standing in one position for too long. If you are elderly or disabled, work only for short periods only, and rest frequently.
Re-design the landscape and tasks to minimize labour
Although working in the garden provides good exercise, often there are tasks which can be made easier to enable you to put time into other more interesting aspects of gardening. For example:
Retain leaf debris on the garden beds as mulch and pick up fallen leaves on lawns with the mower. Mulches protect plants, conserve soil moisture, and save on extensive weeding.
When weeding and cultivating are necessary, devise easier ways to weed. For example, wait for the right weather to condition the soil, leave weeds to die in the sun, and provided there are no persistent seed heads, or propagules, add the weeds to the mulch.
Aerate the soil without digging by using a fork.
Encourage the no-dig gardening concept.
Make good compost to avoid unnecessary digging.
Consider raised beds, or containers, which allow gardening at bench height for those with chronic back problems, .
Installing hard landscape surfaces may limit the extent of lawn, but will improve access to many parts of the garden. The photograph above shows how satisfactory hard surfacing enables improved access and movement. The entrance is sloped for easy access, handrails for balance, and there is provision for a shaded rest area.
Careful plant selection can also make gardening easier. Select plant materials for their predictable growth rates, requirements for little or no pruning, staking, watering, or fertilizing, and for their tolerance to pests and diseases.