Gardens for the senses

Time spent in natural environments can provide a range of health benefits, including reduced stress and lowered blood pressure. Most gardens offer visual appeal, but a sensory garden is designed to stimulate all five senses. It’s not hard to transform your own backyard into a sensory delight.

Sensory gardens also have proven therapeutic value. For example, people with disabilities (such as visual impairment or dementia) can enjoy nature in a safe and tactile environment. Sensory gardens can also make a great contribution to emotional and physical wellbeing. They can be beautiful places to relax, reflect, meditate, contemplate and talk.

Interactivity
Your sensory garden should be designed to encourage interactivity. Suggestions include:

• Think about the people who will use the garden and take their ages and abilities into account when drawing up your design. For example, raised garden beds and hanging baskets are easier for the elderly to manage than garden beds at ground level.
• Provide appropriate seating in the garden. For example, arm rests are essential for elderly users. Seats should also have adequate space around them so wheelchairs can fit alongside.
• Create walkways that meander through the garden – this is more attractive than straight paths and invites the visitor to slow down and look around. Interesting walkways that start and finish at the same point are ideal for people with dementia.
• Appeal to young children by including a sandpit (in a shaded area). Swings and a slide also encourage children to play in the backyard.
• Use the produce from your garden in craft activities. For example, you could pick and arrange flowers in vases or pluck scented petals and make your own pot pourri.
• Involve children in making a scarecrow for the vegetable plot.

• Plant flowers of varying colours. Take time of day and the seasons into account. For example, white flowers look almost luminous in low light conditions. Plant bulbs for plenty of colour during the winter months.
• Include red-leafed, soft grey foliaged and variegated plant varieties.
• Make use of contrast; for example, you could cluster together plants of different shapes, sizes and colours.
• Clip or prune certain plants (such as conifers) into interesting shapes.
• Consider planting long grasses, strap-leaved plants and ‘weeping’ tree varieties – it’s restful to watch and listen to plants moving in the breeze.
• Install a water feature. Include bright varieties of fish and water plants in ponds, with a bench nearby. (You should install a mesh screen just below the surface of the water to protect young children and to discourage birds and cats from taking the fish.) If a sunken pond is not possible, a raised birdbath or other water feature works well.
• Include plants that appeal to butterflies, such as English lavender and hebe varieties.
• Use trees and plants to screen visually unappealing areas. Consider choosing trees that attract bird life (you can include a bird feeder on one of the branches) and trees that change their colour in Autumn.
• Consider the view from inside the house and include interesting plant and flower displays outside windows.
• Pot plants don’t have to be confined to traditional pots. Be creative and use items such as old shoes, a wheelbarrow or car tyres.

• Include nectar-producing plants that lure birds into your garden. A garden ‘singing’ with birds is an inviting place to visit.
• Encourage birds into your garden with a birdbath. However, make sure the bath is ‘cat-proof’.
• Hang wind chimes in breezy areas.
• Install a water feature. The sound of running water is relaxing.
• Choose textured paths that make sounds as you walk on them, for example crushed gravel. For people with sight impairment, incorporating a different texture underfoot by the gate or front door will help them to recognise where they are in the garden.

• Incorporate plants with different textures such as large fleshy leaves, velvety or furry leaves as well as feathery ferns.
• Vary the textures in your garden. For example, if you have smooth pebbles surrounding a water feature in one place, you could install lichen-covered rocks in another.
• Choose hardy varieties of plants that can cope with handling. Place delicate flowers and plants in hard-to-reach places.
• Include different types of surfaces along your walkways – for example tiles, crushed gravel and stone slabs.
• Place plants and trees close to walkways so that anyone ambling along the paths is brushed by foliage.
• Provide sunny and shady areas to offer temperature contrast.
• Place prickly or thorny plants, such as roses, well away from paths and sitting areas. You may prefer not to include plants with thorns or spikes in your sensory garden.
• The bark of trees can also provide a tactile experience.

• Consider planting flowers with subtle smells such as violets.
• Consider planting a non-slip creeper or herb near the path edges so that, when you walk on the plant, it will release a beautiful aroma – for example pennyroyal, mint or thyme.
• Space scented flowers at intervals around your garden so that the different scents will not be confusing or overwhelming.
• Plant herbs near to pathways or seats. Many herbs are very aromatic but only release their scent when the leaves are rubbed or crushed.

• Grow your own herbs and use them in your cooking.
• Plant a vegetable garden.
• Use large pots for fruit trees, bay trees and nut trees if you don’t have space in your garden.
• Consider buying small fruit trees for your garden.
• Petals from certain flowers can be used in salads – for example, nasturtiums and violets.

• Garden nurseries
• Horticultural Therapy Association of Victoria Tel. (03) 9848 9710
• For enjoyment and inspiration, visit sensory gardens open to the public, such as the Royal Botanic Gardens in South Yarra, Melbourne (sensory gardens include the Herb Garden and the Grey Garden) Tel. (03) 9252 2300

• Most gardens offer visual appeal, but a sensory garden is one that is designed to stimulate other senses as well.
• Think about the people who will use the garden and take their ages and abilities into account with your design and plantings.
• If anyone in your family suffers from hay fever or asthma, choose plants that are pollinated by birds or insects rather than plants that release their seeds into the air.

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