Tarentum gardener marks 20 years of lily sale to benefit therapeutic riding in McCandless

Picture yourself in a saddle on horseback, traversing the tranquil surroundings of a wooded area.

For Tarentum resident Cindy Bowser, such a scenario once ranked among her favorite activities, and she mentioned one of her favorite places to venture.

“Harrison Hills Park is small, but it is gorgeous with that trail above the river,” she said about the preserved property off Freeport Road and its Allegheny overlook. “It is gorgeous.”

Beginning in the 1990s and continuing for a decade, she organized judged trail ridess at picturesque locales for her fellow equestrians to raise money on behalf of Riding for the Handicapped of Western Pennsylvania Inc., located near North Park in McCandless.

“It got to be too much work,” Bowser said. “You had to go on foot and check all the trails in the park that you wanted to horses to go on, and you had to get, like, 20 people to volunteer, 10 judges and 10 stewards, plus the people working with the scoring and everything.”

She wanted to keep supporting the cause, though.

“I kept thinking, what are we going to do?” she recalled. “Well, I’ve been growing daylilies and showing them. So I thought, well, I can try selling them.”

The first year, she donated 30 containers of the hardy perennials with, although she initially considered it to be on the high side, an asking price of $10 each.

“We sold all 30 pots,” she said. “The following year, we did a hundred.”

The sale continues this year for its 20th anniversary, despite this summer’s heat taking somewhat of a toll her garden.

But whatever it does produce is plenty enough to impress longtime Riding for the Handicapped instructor and board officer Marsha Diehl:

“To me, it’s magical that she can do that in a little backyard in Tarentum.”

Diehl, who lives just a few miles away from the farm off Grubbs Road that serves as Riding for the Handicapped’s home, lauded Bowser for being among the many kindhearted individuals who help fulfill the nonprofit’s mission of providing free therapeutic sessions for people with special needs from ages 3 to 21.

The weight limit is 160 pounds, give or take a few.

“We try to protect the horses because they’re so hard to get, and there are so many different kids riding with different abilities,” Diehl explained. “There are just a lot of variables that you don’t think about.”

All instructors are trained through either the Council for Education and Certification in Therapeutic Horsemanship or Pennsylvania Council on Therapeutic Horsemanship.

“We try to teach actual riding skills, so it’s not just a pony ride. If the child cannot grasp riding skills, what they may get out of it is core strength and better balance,” Diehl said, citing further benefits: “Their muscles get to stretch. It repeats the motion of walking, and it’s sustainable.”

Physical therapist Maria Kyne founded the organization in 1979 as one of the first of its kind in the United States. Her concept was based on therapeutic riding programs that developed after 1952 Olympic equestrian Lis Hartel of Denmark revealed that exercise with a horse helped her to heal from polio.

Riding for the Handicapped of Western Pennsylvania moved to its McCandless location, which features a sizable indoor arena, in 2012.

A dozen years later, the program continues to thrive thanks to folks like Bowser, 77, who has weathered two strokes, a heart attack and back surgery.

“But I had the daylily sale through all of that,” she said. “We never missed a beat.”

For more information, visit www.rhwpa.org.