Ahh, February… a time we may be lucky enough to spend spare moments savoring garden catalogues and websites snuggled by a fire or with a pet. Why not design a sensory garden this year? A sensory garden is a planted area designed to stimulate reactions from our senses of taste, sight, smell, sound, and/or touch.
There are multiple benefits to designing a sensory garden. A sensory garden can encourage outdoor experiences as leisurely walks, meditations, or scavenger hunts. If you, family members or frequent visitors are challenged with attention deficit disorder, the autism spectrum, anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder, sensory garden plants can provide a grounding sensory experience for practicing meditating or mindfulness. If someone in your sphere struggles with sensory integration issues, sensory garden plants can provide desensitizing opportunities that the visitor has autonomy to start and stop as they feel comfortable. Even pets can enjoy a sensory garden!
So how do you design a sensory garden? First you decide which senses you want to stimulate in the garden, and where. A sketch helps. Think of the sensory event as a plant - draw them as markers in the garden map where you would like them to happen. Would you like to encourage deep breathing while looking at your beautiful backyard vista of mountain, creek, or deer? Plant mints, sages, or eucalyptus near the spot where you want visitors to pause, maybe even encourage the pause with a bench or a bend in the path to slow down.
Gardeners everywhere plant for taste! Any plants considered herbs are edible foliage plants, and the list of plants that qualify as fruit and vegetables is long. For sensory, gardening, it’s helpful to select those that are safely edible raw. Most edible flowers such as nasturtiums, violets are used as garnish or colored infusions, not for having a pronounced flavor. One notable edible flower with its own citrus tang is Hibiscus sabdariffa, a short-day zone 8 plant (grown as a fast-growing annual in our area). Related to okra, the leaves are used as spicy spinach, and the showy flowers and calyxes are used for teas, jelly, jams, juice and spice.
You may already choose plants for a visual experience. Flower garden designs strive for blooms all season. Do you want eyes to dance along magical color? Then plant long-blooming perennials and annuals in groups, using contrasting colors next to each other to excite all the rods and cones in our eyes. Contrasting colors and textures of foliage can be just as stimulating to our eyes as flowers, such as putting lime-green sweet potato vine under a blue cypress next to burgundy and pink variegated coleus, in a bed edged with dragon’s blood sedum. A monochrome garden creates a more calming visual experience. For example, planting all white blooms, grey foliage, and night-blooming plants can encourage calm moonlight walks.
To stretch your design wings, try choosing plants for a pronounced olfactory experience. Plants with fragrant foliage include mints (including bergamots, and hyssops), evergreens such as balsams, firs, pines, cedars and cypresses, and many plants considered herbs. Many flowering plants are also fragrant, such as: jasmine, magnolia, heliotrope, gardenia, lilac, peony, sweet alyssum, lavender, nicotiana, moonflower, mock orange, lily of the valley, oriental lily, hyacinth, sweet pea, phlox, Poet’s daffodil (Narcissus poeticus var. recurvus), dianthus (carnations, pinks, and sweet williams), and korean spice viburnum. English and old roses tend to be the most fragrant rose varieties. Some azaleas offer fragrance as well, such as 'Davisil', 'Else Frye', and 'Tri Lights’. Fragrant crabapple varieties include 'Charlotte', 'Brandywine', and 'Prince Georges’. Be aware of unwanted scents as well. Paw Paw fruit smells
tropical, reminiscent of banana, but the tree’s blooms smell like rotting meat to attract their fly and beetle pollinators. And most people find the Ginkgo tree beautiful but unpleasantly smelly, so it wouldn’t be a great choice upwind of outdoor spaces you frequent.
To treat garden visitors to a sensory touch experience, consider soft foliage plants and avoid plants with thorns, especially next to walkways. Plants with touch-friendly textures include pussy willow (Salix discolor), Irish moss, dusty miller, artemesias (such as Artemisia schmidtiana ‘Silver Mound’), lamb’s ear, wooly mint (Mentha suaveolens), rabbit’s foot fern, Mexican bush sage, licorice plant, Jerusalem sage, mulleins, Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenuissima), and 'Morning Light' silver grass (Miscanthus sinensis).
Garden sound experiences depend on wind and pollinators. Tall grasses and trees with open structures, such as Norway spruce, white pine, river birch, and quaking aspen can create gentle susurrations or comforting white noise to accompany us on our garden visit. A kinetic garden sculpture, wind chime, or water feature such as a fountain or waterfall can also add sound to your garden. Be sure to test the sculpture or chimes before installing, so you don’t end up with discordant noises you find unpleasant! Where you place the sound-creating plants or objects is important, too. Sound too close or too loud can be unsettling and discourage garden visits. Sound is four times quieter each time you double the distance between the object and our ears, so you can adjust the volume of a sound-maker just by moving it closer or farther away from a garden visitor’s likely position. Pollinators add sound as well; pollinator
plants will host a bubble of garden sound. Enjoying a garden walk in the rain or sitting in the garden with your eyes closed are additional ways to enjoy sound in your garden space.
Mulch and walkway surfaces can be part of the sensory garden design as well. Consider moss or soft turfgrass for walkways to encourage barefoot garden experiences such as grounding and forest bathing. Some soft grasses include Bermuda, zoysia or perennial ryegrass. Including mulches such as cocoa bean shells, pine bark nuggets, and smooth pebbles will contribute to the sensory garden experience as well.
Once you have your sensory design "wish list," you will need to adjust the planned plant locations so each has the necessary soil, water and sun requirements to survive and thrive. Before purchasing or sowing, don’t forget to check plant safety, especially if pets, small children, or adults with conditions such as pica or other eating disorders will be visiting your garden. Some plants have toxic parts; you may have to put all edibles together in a "tasting" zone or omit toxic plants all together. As with all garden designs, your local Master Gardeners can provide support in making plant selections for your site.
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