My students need 2 new wheelchair accessible planters so that wheelchair-bound students can have equal access to participate in planting and maintaining the school garden.
Our school is creating a beautiful outdoor garden lab. Students have formed a school gardening club, and are busy planning which seeds they would like to plant this Spring. Some of our students, however, can't easily participate in these activities: those students with mobility restrictions.
Green Thumb Growers Guild is a horticultural education program that meets as part of the afterschool enrichment programs at a public elementary school in rural upstate New York.
Students who participate experience anything and everything having to do with growing and using plants (and fungi). The Green Thumb Growers Guild began in October 2013 with 15 members. We use the outdoor garden lab behind the elementary, classroom space for crafting projects, the nature trail for collecting and observing, and the greenhouse at the High School for starting seeds and experimenting. Like the plants and gardens, we are growing as an organization.
My Project
Our outdoor school garden currently has 6 planters that we will use to plant herbs and veggies in the Spring. None of these planters are handicap accessible. The Gronomics planters are built at a height designed for mobility restricted gardeners, allowing students in wheelchairs the equal access and opportunity to participate in planting and caring for plants.
If you garden or have worked with plants, you know the important impact that a connection with growing and caring for plants has for our education and lives.
Students who are wheelchair-bound are often restricted in the opportunities available due mainly to their lack of physical access to those learning activities (think playgrounds, science labs, and classroom centers). We must think more clearly about designing our spaces for ease of access for those students who use wheelchairs.
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