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The Guelph Enabling Garden is a multi-use garden designed for children, the elderly, families, but especially for those community members with varying degrees of physical and cognitive abilities. We are pleased to announce that the “Garden” is now receiving $10,000 per annum from the United Way of Guelph and Wellington.
The following was written by Sandy Warley describing his and his wife Anita’s experiences with the Enabling Garden:
Anita and I are involved in various aspects of the Garden’s operation but our most rewarding experience is as volunteers and users. We were at the Garden every Sunday morning this last year from April to October. Our first act on arrival is to make a tour of the garden, examining the progress of plants with the swing of the seasons, drinking in their beauty and endless interest, and noting the jobs to be done that day. Anita then busies herself with weeding, watering, plant care and sweeping the paths throughout the Garden while I tend the raised bed that bears our names. Our bed is small, only 5’ square, but what it means to me epitomizes what the Garden is all about.
I’m a life-long gardener. I started gardening as a nipper helping my Dad tend his garden. My first job was in horticulture. I studied it in university. I’ve had good gardens wherever we’ve lived. Gardening has been my passion for as long as I can remember. Anita has had the same experience and interest, and creating and tending fine gardens together has been one of our strongest bonds.
Over a quarter of a century ago I developed progressive multiple sclerosis. As the disease tightened its grip and I lost strength, balance and mobility, the scope and range of what I could do in the garden narrowed. Successively, I gave up the vegetable garden, the fruit trees, work in the flowerbeds and, finally, mowing our lawns. As my physical abilities contracted, Anita took on more and more until essentially, she was doing everything and I became a spectator.
Along came the Enabling Garden. In a brilliant act that married our shared interest in gardening and my disability, our children endowed a raised bed in our names to recognize the 50th anniversary of our marriage. At a stroke, with access and special tools, I was again enabled to care for a garden. Though small in area it’s huge in terms of the lift that it gives my sense of identity and accomplishment and thereby my wellness. I – and others with restricted abilities – am again enabled.
 There’s another attribute of the Enabling Garden that is important. The experience of folks with disabilities (I’m not afraid of the word) is that they face social marginalization. We can’t go places and do things as we did before. We meet fewer new people and have fewer experiences. At work or in the organizations to which we belong, we tend to be omitted from longer-term plans and projects because of uncertainties about our abilities and availability down the road. We become progressively discounted, omitted, excluded and, at last, unseen. Projects like the Enabling Garden change that insofar as it explicitly acknowledges us and enables us to again add value to our community.
And so, on those lovely Sunday mornings when Anita and I are working in the Garden, we think always and speak often of the fine people who had the vision that the Garden would “enable and include” people with different abilities of the civic leaders and staff who actively facilities its creation, and of the donors, large and small, whose made it a magnificent reality.
To learn more about the Guelph Enabling Garden, please visit www.enablinggarden.org or visit the garden in Riverside Park below the EvergreenSeniors Centre and beside the Speed River.
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