Lazy Susan garden for the wheelchair-bound

  

Pasadena designer Laramee Haynes has come up with a wonderful idea for those who are wheelchair-bound or simply not able to get down on their hands and knees to tend their gardens. Dubbed the "accessible edible garden," Haynes' creation amounts to a giant Lazy Susan: a truck axle combined with a sturdy metal base to support an 8-foot-diameter redwood top. Garden beds raised to table height enable wheelchair users to reach their plants with ease. (Haynes, shown above, is not wheelchair-bound but used one to test out his universal design.)

The garden-in-the-round is perfect for growing herbs and small row crops like radishes and lettuces around the shallower perimeter, with cherry tomatoes and peppers farther back, where the bed becomes deeper. A wheelchair fits comfortably under the tabletop -- which weighs up to 1,000 pounds when filled with soil, but moves easily with a touch of the hand.

Haynes, a former engineer who took over his father's landscaping business 10 years ago, says, "It's the first time I've blended my old and new life together making a mechanical device that's also a garden."  What a lovely marriage of science and nature. Bravo!  www.hayneslandscaping.com  

Laramee Haynes, a former engineer, fashions his elevated garden-in-the-round from a tire axle welded to a sturdy metal base. The recycled, 8-foot diameter top is made from pieces of a redwood deck and turns easily by hand, so the physically challenged can garden with ease.

-- Barbara Thornburg

Photos courtesy of Laramee Haynes

Comments

[Molly McDonough]

I think this is genius. I really appreciate that the LA times has published this. I would like to see a lot more intuitive articles and blogs that have to do with the needs of those wheelchair bound.

California is a great state when it comes to accessibility, let's get even more proactive. A huge thanks to Laramee Haynes for a thoughtful idea. This makes anyones gardening more convenient. If Laramee has anymore garden design ideas for the wheelchair bound, I would love to be notified.