Recently, Barbara Travis, who used to spend six to eight hours a day working on the flower beds and landscaping around her Fort Wayne, Indiana, home, spent two hours working in the yard in the heat and ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.
So Travis removed some of her flower beds and hires Greta Graebner, a local Master Gardener, to take care of her weeding and other gardening chores.
An increasing number of older adults find themselves wrestling with the same challenge—struggling to take care of the flowers and landscaping they worked hard to create, or pulling it out or hiring someone to do the work, said Ricky Kemery, recently retired horticulture educator for the Allen County office of the Purdue Cooperative Extension Service.
The problem could get even bigger: By 2033, Kemery said the number of people age 65 and older will be greater than the number younger than that age. The number of older adults also is projected to double by the year 2060.
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