By John T. Hulley

Creative recycling allows two antique tubs to be turned into unique, wheelchair-friendly gardens.

Multiple sclerosis erodes my capabilities but, as it does, I find myself searching out alternative solutions to satisfy my gardener’s desire. Elevated garden areas increase my ability to get dirty but often they’re an expensive answer. And the standard variety are decidedly unattractive.

Fortunately, raised gardens come in many guises. I discovered this when I undertook a unique recycling project. The result is two easily maintained elevated beds that are enjoyable and easy on both eye and wallet.

Both gardens involve abandoned bath tubs. The salvaged tubs are antiques in their own right and have converted easily. One has become a water garden; the other harbours a collection of cold hardy succulents.

Rust-proof paint tidied up the cast iron tub. With its original ball feet and taps intact, it has become an attractive and serviceable above ground water garden that is easily worked from a scooter or wheel-chair. Available native plants including a Water Lily, Arrowhead, Pickerel Weed, Bog Bean, Zebra Cane, and Bulrushes share the pool with an assortment of tropicals such as Parrot’s Feather, and Water Hyacinth. Their flowers and foliage provide a summer of varying colours, forms, and textures above the water’s surface. In the shadows below several fan-tail goldfish share an interwoven stalk and root system world with myriad invertebrates in their multiple life stages. All in all, it’s attractively different and wondrously rewarding for folk of any age willing to dabble and discover.

The raised succulent bed, an extreme ‘stone sink’ garden, occupies a 19th century bath tub formed of concrete on an iron frame. Cold hardy cactus and succulents (our area being Zone 5b) share with an eclectic mix of stone beasts, gnarled wood, and assorted bones (these being liberally gnawed by local squirrels chasing calcium). A friend contributed year round eye appeal with her painted desert scene on the front. Spectacular cactus flowers (Opuntia species & hybrids) that open larger than my hand catch the eye in early summer. Later colour derives from the blooms and variega-tions of an assortment of Sedum and Orostachys species. Hardy arrid-climate plants contribute to a garden throughout the year by combining the bizarre with the beautiful.

Now, raised to the working height of a wheelchair or scooter, these two gardens satisfy a little more of my gardening desire.

John Hulley, who has MS, is a biologist, ecologist, advocate and freelance writer who lives in Brooklin, Ontario. This article first appeared in Total Access, Summer 1999.