Inspiration Gardens

Whether you are building an enabling garden from scratch or adding some accessibility details to your existing landscape, visiting an operating garden can give you ideas and inspiration.

The following gardens offer innovative programs, equipment or themes that you can integrate into your own site.

Chicago, Illinois

The Buehler Enabling Garden of the Chicago Botanical Garden features nearly 11,000 square feet dedicated to bringing gardening to people of all ages and abilities.

Along with raised beds, the Buehler Enabling Garden features hanging container gardens that can be raised or lowered depending on the height and mobility of the gardener. Water features and tactile beds help people with impaired vision enjoy the surroundings while level, paved paths make the entire attraction wheelchair accessible.

Orlando, Florida

Gardeners often enjoy sitting in the grass to enjoy the colors, sounds and fragrances of their gardens. At the Harry P. Leu Gardens, many wheelchair bound visitors may also experience this simple joy. Raised beds of trimmed grass make getting out of a wheelchair and onto a piece of earth easier. Leu Gardens also features raised beds for gardeners with impaired mobility or vision.

Guelph, Ontario

The Guelph Enabling Garden is one of a handful of public gardens that strives to be fully accessible to people of all ages with physical challenges and developmental delays. With a sturdy base of community and volunteer help, the Guelph Enabling Garden features a wide range of enabling horticulture workshops and classes.

Raised beds, arbors and sensory gardens are nestled in the crooks of a meandering path. The garden is still growing, with boardwalks overtop the river and water features in the works.

Madison, Wisconsin

Although not fully wheelchair accessible, the Troy Enabling Garden offers raised bed gardens to community members who are not able to maintain a traditional garden. Gardeners choose the plants for their beds, work in the garden at least once a week and enjoy harvests. Workshops are available on topics such as food preservation, organic gardening and pest control.

Oskaloosa, Iowa

The John F. Lacey Enabling Garden is unique in that students from local schools and day care centers are instrumental in the garden’s design and maintenance. Pizza themed beds and carefully stenciled alphabet signs demonstrate that accessible gardens can still be whimsical. The Lacey Garden also features a sensory garden with five raised beds inspired by the five senses.

Mount Vernon, Washington

The Discovery Garden of Washington State University features both an enabling garden and a children’s garden to demonstrate that people of any age or ability can enjoy the outdoors.

The wheelchair accessible enabling garden features beds of several different heights, tabletop beds and vertical gardens. Modified equipment is available to examine and try out. The children’s area introduces young gardeners to concepts like composting and plant selection through hands-on demonstrations.

Macon, Georgia

The Alzheimer's Memory Garden at Macon’s Central City Park uses traditional garden sounds, smells and sights to help evoke memories in adults with Alzheimer’s Disease. The slip resistant paths are wheelchair accessible and all plants are nontoxic.

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