Posted July 28, 2011
Gardening isn’t just a hobby. For some, it is a way to better their health.
That is the idea behind the OT Garden Club.
Occupational therapists from Columbus Community Hospital started the club last year with the opening of the Columbus Community Garden. Two plots are used by occupational therapists Megan Freier and Liz Gonka.
They invite patients to garden, which can help them in their recovery.
“It’s kind of like free therapy,” Gonka said.
Patients like Wilda Buckle have been coming to the garden for several weeks, helping with planting, weeding and harvesting vegetables. Buckle suffered a broken left wrist in a January fall and has incorporated gardening into her therapy.
“Any little thing you do helps,” Buckle said of activity she has done to help her wrist heal.
As a natural right-hander, Buckle said it was easy to use her dominate hand for most everything, but in order to get strength and movement back in her left wrist, she had to do exercises to move the process along. She went to occupational therapy, but also found gardening helped.
Gardening is especially good for those recuperating from injuries like Buckle had, Freier said.
“When people have a hand injury, they are hesitant to do activities that involve their hands. With gardening, you have to use your hands,” Freier said.
A variety of people have volunteered to work in the garden including stroke victims and lymphedema patients.
Special tools that have been supplied by master gardeners are used by the patients. The tools have been extended and adapted with ergonomically angled handles to keep the wrist in a more natural position.
Gonka said the garden has been a great way to get patients to transition into daily activities. She hopes in the future the hospital will have its own garden where patients could work in raised beds, which could be utilized by those who are in wheelchairs.
Working in the garden is optional and patients can volunteer as many hours as they choose. This year, about five patients have regularly been tending to the plots. The garden has become self-sufficient. Much of the vegetables grown last year were sold and some of the profits were used to purchase seeds for this year’s crops. The group also gave a donation of money from the sale to the Columbus Area United Way.
The OT Club isn’t the only one from the hospital that has been taking advantage of the Community Garden. Another plot is being used by Deb Moore, a registered dietitian. She hopes by next year to get families, students or children involved in raising vegetables in order to learn about healthy eating and fighting obesity.
Most of those who have plots at the garden are couples and families. For some, like Jenny Sylvester, this is her first experience growing vegetables.
Sylvester is often at the site with her children, Jackson, 9, and Jaylynn, 5. As a first time gardener, it has taken Sylvester some trial and error to get vegetables sprouting and producing, but now she has rows of radishes, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes and jalapeno peppers.
The veggies that have been harvested have been shared with other family members including her husband’s uncle and grandmother. One of Sylvester’s sisters is going to use the vegetables to can salsa and spaghetti sauce.
Gina Matson started gardening last year with her two boys, Alex and Erik. She said gardening has helped save on her grocery bill. Matson is able to freeze some of the vegetables like squash and use long-lasting potatoes throughout the fall and winter months instead of having to buy more.
The experience has also made her children, age 13 and 9, more apt to eating vegetables.
“We grew it so they want to try it. They have that ownership of growing it ourselves,” she said.
As members of 4-H, the kids have also used what they have grown in as entries in the Platte County Fair.
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Copyright © 2011, Columbus Telegram, Neb.