SUMMER solstice is also known as the longest day of the year.

I chose to celebrate this event by taking on the garden.

I forget whether I have mentioned my move, but recently I’ve moved house.

Two weeks in and I have only a few boxes left but I decided I wanted to decorate one of my favourite rooms in the house – the garden.

I had organised to get all my plants lifted from the old garden so I had pots and pots littering the garden, although I should give a shout-out to my mum, who I nearly killed off a few weeks ago with a good eight hours of hard labour.

Anyway, I have decided that I’d like a ‘dry garden’ aka Mediterranean.

This means some clever planting and landscaping and conveniently low maintenance. Initially this means shopping and more hard labour.

Whilst I’m good at shopping I’m less good at hard labour. Not that I don’t mind physical work, but when seated with poor balance, gardening activities have to be divided between do-able and not do-able.

Even taking on plant shopping is not independent courtesy of garden centre gravel, plants not fitting into a standard supermarket basket and, in this instance, a sizeable slope which meant I needed assistance either from mates (thanks Hubert!) or staff.

Then comes the gardening itself. Most plants live below ground and I like a natural look, so that means being able to dig below the level of my feet.

You don’t see many gardeners sitting on a chair tending the soil. That’s because it’s hard! Luckily I’m tall with a half-decent stretch and I’m also stubborn, so I can deal with the small things, but anything deep or heavy means calling in reinforcements.

I find gardening one of the pleasures in life and despite aspects of it being out of reach, quite literally in some cases, the overall activity and outcome outweigh the feelings of being disabled or unable to be fully independent, as in other areas of my life as a wheelchair user.

Furthermore, I stumbled across some news that green spaces boost learning and are beneficial for health (even if you are bossing about long-suffering friends and family).

A double win, as they say. Often with a disability it’s so easy to find asking for help a negative experience and reinforcing the feeling of being different but if you take the long view that need not be the case.

Okay, these green fingers are tired so I’ll bid you farewell...