Sage Gardeners

Our mission is to improve quality of life for aging seniors through accessible gardening. Sage Gardeners, a non-profit 501(c)3 organization, is dedicated to improving the quality life for our aging ranchers, farmers and gardeners in Montana. We realize that many older adults are no longer feeling the dirt in their hands and have reluctantly given up on a favorite pastime because they have had to relocate to smaller and/or more easily manageable living spaces. Older adults, who live in their own homes, find it very difficult to garden in-ground, therefore discontinuing their gardening. Our mission is to reconnect these aging seniors to their gardening roots building one accessible garden at a time.Our goals as an organization are simple: provide accessible gardens to disadvantaged seniors in Montana as an opportunity to improve their quality of life. Many studies have been done on healing environments and the elderly. These studies have found both psychological and physical benefits from incorporating natural environs into people's lives. We work to bring purposeful activities to improve quality of life in ways that include: improvement in nutrition and food security, increases in social activity therefore decreasing isolation, improvement in physical exercise with improvements in stretching, reaching, and bending, etc., and increases in mental stimulation, cognitive development, and memory retrieval. We do this by building accessible garden spaces for seniors at community gardens, skilled and assisted living facilities, senior affordable housing complexes, cancer, Alzheimer's, and veteran support homes/centers; we also provide seasonal garden-side presentations that engage seniors and promote a healthy lifestyle. We also provide raised gardens to seniors that live independently and want a garden, as we feel that our community benefits if able seniors live independently as long as possible. A large focus of our work is spent on our Maintenance Project, an annual project that assists in maintaining each and every past garden to the need of that recipient which includes physical contact/touch via weekly check-ins, verbal and written check-ins, replenishment of seeds/plants/soil/compost, and assistance with gardening issues such as pest mgmt./harvesting/preserving. The demand for this project increases heavily each year.