When did you first kneel down in the garden again, and how do you get back up?

#1gardeninggwen(Joined Jan 2025 · 29 posts)April 6, 2026, 10:12 am

Every spring this comes up in my head again, so I'm putting it to the forum properly this time.

I've got a new member of my gardening club, six weeks post op, standing at the edge of her own borders looking at them like they're a cliff. She asked me when she can kneel down again and I realised that although I do it constantly now, I could not tell her when I started, or whether what I did was sensible or just what I got away with.

What I remember is being far more scared of getting up than of getting down. So: when did you first kneel, what did you kneel on, and what's your method for standing back up without hauling on the fence?

#2trev_lefthip(Joined Jul 2025 · 13 posts)April 6, 2026, 3:48 pm

Kneeler stool with the two handles, the sort you flip over and it becomes a low seat. Twelve quid and it took the whole problem away. You put your hands on the handles and push up through your arms rather than folding yourself in half.

Before that I weeded standing up with a long handled hoe and felt very superior about it.

#3pbike60(Joined Feb 2025 · 36 posts)April 7, 2026, 8:30 am

About four months for me, and only because that's when I had a reason to. Nobody ever told me not to kneel, but nobody told me I could either, which is how most of these questions go.

What I'd flag is that kneeling itself was never the hard part. It's the bit where you're down there and you reach across yourself for something just out of range, and suddenly you're twisting on a bent hip without meaning to. That's the movement I got told off about, not the kneeling.

#4moira1963(Joined Oct 2025 · 16 posts)April 7, 2026, 7:15 pm

Kneel on both knees rather than going down onto the operated side first, that's what made it work for me. And I put the walking stick down beside me before I went down, so it was there to push on coming back up rather than three feet away by the shed being useless.

#5Ms Priya RamanSurgical moderator(Joined Oct 2024 · 91 posts)April 8, 2026, 9:39 am

This is one where the general answer and the individual answer differ, so let me separate them.

In general, kneeling on a healed hip replacement is not harmful and is not something patients are told to give up permanently. The implant tolerates it, and unlike a knee replacement there is no scar sitting directly over the surface you kneel on. What people are usually told to be careful of early is not kneeling as such but the combination that pbike60 has correctly identified: deep hip flexion together with rotation and reaching across the body. That combination is what the early precautions are designed to limit, and where they are given they commonly run for the first six to twelve weeks while the soft tissues heal. What those precautions actually are, and why the advice varies so much between surgeons, is set out in hip dislocation precautions.

The individual answer is that whether restrictions were given to you at all, and for how long, depends on your surgical approach and your surgeon's protocol. Some patients here will have been given a strict twelve week list and some none, and both were correctly advised for their own operation. So the sensible move for gardeninggwen's new member at six weeks is to ask that question at her review, which is imminent, rather than to follow anyone here.

One thing I would encourage rather than caution against: getting down to the ground and back up is a genuinely useful capacity to keep, and the strength and balance work that makes it possible protects against falls, which are a far more common threat to a new hip than gardening is. Where that fits into activity long term is covered in exercise and sport after a hip replacement.

#6gardeninggwen(Joined Jan 2025 · 29 posts)April 9, 2026, 11:04 am

That's the distinction I was missing, thank you. It's not the kneeling, it's the reaching sideways once you're down there. Which explains why I instinctively shuffle round to face what I'm weeding now and assumed I was just being fussy.

I've passed on the kneeler stool recommendation and told her to ask at her six week appointment rather than take my word for it. She has, however, already bought the stool.