Grace Cottage Hospital’s Summer Safety Tips

Gardening Safety Tips
From Grace Cottage’s Rehabilitation Department

• Pace your preparation and planting tasks to avoid overall soreness and potential injury to muscles.
• Use your large leg muscles - NOT your back - to help you lift the wheelbarrow and all that mulch and moo-doo.
• Bend at the knees, not at the waist, to garden in low places. Kneeler pads make excellent additions to garden tool baskets. If kneeling is problematic, try sitting on a low stool to reach the dirt.
• Try using long-handled tools to help with troweling, shoveling and raking…and remember to “take turns” with each side of your body.
• Remember to take frequent rest breaks…gardening is heavy work for our bodies and uses many muscles that we “forget” we have.
• Drink plenty of fluids to stay hydrated during gardening and yard activities…water is NOT just for fish!

<< Previous story | Next story >>