GROWING FRESH VEGIES AND HERBS STILL A REALITY FOR OLDER AND DISABLED CLIENTS
Mersey Community Care volunteers have been busy building and installing raised Vegetable Planter Boxes for our clients who still love to grow their own vegies and herbs. The Vegetable Planter Boxes are a great idea for clients who would still love to have a vegetable garden, but struggle to garden at ground level.
The Vegetable Planter Boxes have been designed by Neville Munday who is the Minor Home Maintenance Field Coordinator at MCCA.
Mr Munday and a team of volunteers work together to build the Vegetable Planter Boxes in the Workshop at MCCA. The planter boxes are then delivered to the client. Once the planter box has been erected in the chosen location, it is filled with soil and mushroom compost and is then ready to be planted.
Mr Munday said “It is wonderful to see the look on the clients faces when the planter box is completed. The idea of installing raised garden beds provides people who have mobility issues, with the opportunity to grow their own fresh vegetables to eat and it gives people something to do”.
Mr Munday went on to say “One gentleman who had a planter box installed said that he had been feeling really down, as he is now confined to a wheelchair, and missed having a vegetable garden. But the raised vegie bed has allowed this gentleman to plant and grow his own vegetables because he can still manage to reach the planter box comfortably from his wheelchair.”
Mr Munday also said, “It is really important that clients still have opportunities to do tasks that are meaningful to them”.
The standard Vegetable Planter Box is 2 meters long, 1 meter wide and 400mm deep, which is a generous amount of space to grow a functional little vegie patch. The cost of the Vegetable Planter Box is $279.00 which includes: 4 x 3m sleepers, 4 pegs, screws, 1 meter of topsoil, 2 bags of mushroom compost, 1 x 2.5kg bag of blood and bone and a $25 installation fee.
The Vegetable Planter Box pictured has been custom built and is 600mm high. The space around the planter boxes has been designed to allow for a wheelchair to move between them.
Custom built Vegetable Planter Boxes together with a quote, can be provided upon request.
Existing MCCA clients may obtain a brochure or request a Vegetable Planter Box by contacting Mersey Community Care. For all enquiries please phone 6424 8883.
Kathryn Edmunds Operations Manager Mersey Community Care Association Inc.
