A project to make life easier for elderly and disabled gardeners is being launched in Oxfordshire on June 18.

A new range of specially designed tools and an advice service will help wheelchair users and people with physical or mental disabilities look after their own gardens.

The Easy Gardening Project is being run by two charities -- Dialability, which offers leisure and recreation advice to disabled people, and Thrive, which helps disadvantaged people take part in community life -- and Yarnton Nurseries garden centre.

The tools include lightweight and long-handled equipment with interchangeable heads so less heavy equipment is needed. Most of the tools can be used from a wheelchair or standing up.

Jan Stenzhorn, of Dialability, based at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Headington, Oxford, came up with the idea to produce a special range of gardening tools.

She said: "Gardening is a real pleasure for so many people and it is very important as you get older and less able, or if you have a disability, to still feel you can enjoy your garden."

The Oxford in Bloom team behind the city's annual gardening competition is also getting involved to help promote the scheme.

The project is being launched at Yarnton Nurseries, which helped create the project, and has set up an area in the garden centre dedicated to less able people.

Oxford garden designer Katherine Shock, who is working on solutions for gardeners with restricted mobility, will be there to talk to users.

Representatives from local charities will be presented with tools at the launch.

The Pathway Workshop, which employs disabled adults to make wooden furniture, and Root and Branch, a craft project for people with mental health difficulties, will test out the new tools at the launch. There will also be demonstrations, a competition and informal advice from 10am.