Rebecca Kolls, star of the television show “Rebecca’s Garden,” is partnering with the eldercare service, Home Instead Senior Care, in a campaign to make gardening fun for maturing adults. The public education campaign is designed to bring back the joy of gardening to seniors who are having difficulty maintaining gardens or who have given up gardening altogether because of illness or the conditions of aging.Kolls, whose own grandparents inspired her interest in gardening, said, “There’s a nurturing aspect of gardening where you take a seed and coddle it. Seniors have given up their child rearing, so gardening gives them baby plants and seedlings again. It’s a new way of caring for something.”Kolls and Home Instead Senior Care have produced a four-color gardening guide complete with gardening tips and fun and simple gardening projects for seniors to do alone or with their family caregivers. The guide is available free of charge from the Home Instead Senior Care office serving the Colorado Springs, Monument and Woodland Park areas by calling (719) 534-0908.The National Gardening Association reports that 81 percent of households age 55 and over (26 million households) surveyed participate in one or more types of lawn and garden activities, spending an average of $495 per household per year.
