Sensory Gardens

A garden is more than pretty flowers and sweet fragrances — it’s a complete sensory blast, if you know where to look.

Ananya Suresh

Most of us imagine gardens to be a visual or an olfactory experience — vibrant hues and wafting aromas. But what about our other senses? Touch, sound, and taste? Do you think these senses remain indifferent as you stroll through a lush green space with bouncing red geraniums and monsteras with their broad wide leaves?

Did you know that walking through a garden is an experiential journey for your five senses? One that excites and stimulates your tactile, auditory and gustatory senses too. That is -- a sensory garden.

A sensory garden is a selfcontained garden area that allows you to experience a range of sensory experiences. These gardens are designed to stimulate the senses, both individually and in combination, in ways that may not be usual. Dr Prabhakar Rao, landscape architect, is passionate about the sensory aspect of gardens.

He says that when it comes to designing gardens about ninety percent of gardens around us are aimed to stimulate sight, and maybe eight percent stimulate smell. There are few garden lovers, say another 1.5 percent who look for taste and a rare point five percent care for touch. But he feels that zero percent of gardens are made to excite your hearing senses.

To convert the idea of a landscape from aesthetics to experience, Dr Prabhakar has been creating sensory gardens. And also encouraging garden lovers to do the same. “Experience is the new paradigm. Just visual beauty is no more a driver,” he says.

The sound of bamboo leaves rustling through the wind, whistling pines, or exploding seed pods will make your garden a biosterous space. Engaging with trees and plants through sound is a process of meditation. You can also include plants that encourage wildlife in the garden. The buzzing of a bee, the chirping of crickets or squeaking of birds bring nature into your garden. You can also use the hardscape in your garden to bring in the sense of sound — different materials that emit a sound on contact. Like a gravel pathway during rain or a bed of dry leaves.

To create a tactile garden, one that would be a sensory delight for your touch, make the most of the different surfaces and textures that different plants offer. The soft furry leaves of Lamb’s Ears would create a great ground cover, and a great touch sensation. The gel-like sensation from an aloe vera plant, cool spongy mosses on stones, grass under your feet — are some other tactile experiences.

For taste you can have edible flowers, herbs, fruits and vegetables. Pluck them right off the branches and savour them. There’s nothing as satisfying as chewing a leaf off a tulsi plant from your garden!

All these plants are around you. All you have to do is seek them out and bring them home.

Sensory gardens have educational and recreational applications as well. They can be used in the education of special-needs students, including autistic people. It can be viewed as a form of horticultural therapy, and help in the care of people with special needs. Thus making the landscape a more inclusive space. A garden is nature’s gift to be celebrated in multiple ways. Just sense it.

(The writer is an architect.)