TerraForm: the garden within reach of people with disabilities

TERRAform. Orthotherapy represents an opportunity for improved well-being, socialization and recreation for people with reduced mobility. It will be made easier thanks to a new structure called TERRAform and designed by the collective of French architects and artists La Valise.

He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

THEorthotherapy represents an opportunity for improved well-being, socialization and recreation for people a reduced mobility. It will be made easier thanks to a new structure called TERRAform and designed by the collective of French architects and artists La Valise.

It allows you to comfortably get close with your own wheelchair to flower beds and vegetable gardens specially designed so that it is possible, even for those who find themselves affected by motor disabilities, to carry out gardening, such as sowing, transplanting, harvesting fruits from the garden and eliminating weeds.

Orthotherapy can turn into a useful pastime and an opportunity for meeting and socialization, during which to take care of aromatic herbs, flowers and vegetables, dedicating themselves to gardening and plant care. TERRAform has been designed to be sized to provide space for a wheelchair and is particularly suitable for installation next to raised flower beds and garden tables easily accessible with the arms and hands while remaining in a sitting position.

At the moment at least 100 specimens of TERRAform come used in France in contexts of orthotherapy and gardening in the company of patients with reduced range of motion, who in this way can have one more opportunity to spend time outdoors and in contact with nature. Gardening thus becomes a educational support, pedagogical, in a means to foster accountability,social integration and autonomy.

TERRAform promises to be a valuable help against marginalization both of people with disabilities of all ages, and of the elderly who are no longer able to move without the help of a wheelchair, so that they can carry out a beneficial, relaxing activity that helps to save them from situations of solitude. For more information on TERRAform, you can contact the project managers at the e-mail address terraform@aliceadsl.fr or on the website at the address http://terraform.fr/contact.

UPDATE to 19 March 2013: for those wishing to get in touch with the project managers, the Terraform Facebook page