7 Gardening Projects that are Perfect for Seniors

Whether you’re doing it indoors or outside, gardening is a pastime that offers lots of benefits to seniors. 

Not only can fun gardening projects for seniors provide you with a great opportunity for low-impact exercise and enable you to grow your own nutritious food, but gardening can even improve your mood and reduce the risk of things like dementia.

If you want to try gardening but aren’t sure where to start, consider giving these fun gardening projects for seniors a try.

7 Gardening Projects that are Perfect for Seniors

Whether you’re new to gardening or have done it your whole life, you’ve got to give these fun gardening projects a try. 

1. Grow Your Own Salad 

Who doesn’t love a crisp, refreshing salad? 

Even better is a salad bowl filled with ingredients that you’ve grown yourself. Make a list of all of your favorite salad mix-ins, from Romaine lettuce to onions and even tomatoes. Then, think about growing your own indoor or outdoor salad garden. Most of the best salad ingredients can be grown from seed and require minimal space. 

Be sure to brush up on the best way to cut lettuce with a pair of scissors before you start to harvest, too. That way, you’ll be able to enjoy a repeated harvest of tasty, tender leaves.

2. Care for Plants in Hanging Baskets

There’s nothing saying that a garden has to be grown from the ground up! In fact, there are countless types of plants that grow just as well – if not better – when they’re suspended above the ground. As a bonus, you won’t have to worry about bending over to care for your plants since they will be hanging right at eye level!

3. Paint Planters

It can be a lot of fun to plant seeds and propagate new plants from cuttings – but when you’re looking for gardening projects to try, don’t overlook the value of some basic arts and crafts. You need cute planters to grow your new plants in, so make sure they look their best.

Painting planters is an excellent project to keep you busy during the dreary winter months when other gardening projects might be challenging. Grab a paintbrush and your favorite set of containers and get to work!

4. Build a Terrarium 

Terrariums can be used as decor items and also allow you to grow your favorite kinds of succulents in miniature. Building a terrarium does require some concentration and fine motor skills – but once you get your hobby going, you’ll find that it’s incredibly easy to maintain.

5. Care for Succulents

Succulents are some of the easiest plants to care for. They require minimal water and some don’t require a ton of light, either. Consider cultivating a windowsill garden of succulents and enjoy easy, carefree gardening that won’t take up a ton of your time.

6. Make Flower Prints

Another arts and crafts project you can try if you enjoy gardening is to make flower prints. After cutting your favorite bouquet of flowers, dip each flower into some paint and then press it to a piece of paper. 

All you need for this project is some paint, paper, and your flowers. It’s a fun project to try with the grandkids, too! If you don’t have any flowers handy, you can make the same kinds of prints out of leaves. 

7. Grow an Indoor Pizza Garden 

For many of us, the best part of gardening is being able to enjoy some sort of tangible result from what we’ve worked so hard on. Growing a pizza garden – especially for us lovers of the classic pie – is a great way to do this. 

You can grow everything from the tomatoes for the sauce to the herbs – but many gardeners will choose to start small simply by growing a few favorite pizza garden herbs. 

Things like basil, parsley, and oregano grow easily on a sunny windowsill. You can use them in your Friday pizza recipe as well as any other dishes throughout the week. Most herbs benefit from being cut again and again!

Start Small

No matter which of these gardening projects you decide to try, be sure to start out small. It’s easy to find yourself overwhelmed if you take on too many new tasks at once. Gardening offers lots of benefits, but to get the most out of it, you’ve got to take it easy!

Choose just one or two of these gardening projects to try this weekend – you are sure to love the results! 

About the Author

Rebekah Pierce is a writer in upstate New York, just north of the Adirondack Mountains. She holds both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Education degree. In addition to writing, she also owns a farm, where she grows a variety of plants and raises chickens, pigs, and sheep. Her writing interests cover everything from farming and gardening to education, health and wellness, and business. She writes regularly for her own blog, J&R Pierce Family Farm, as well as for California Mobility.