Designing your sensory garden

In this post I will outline aspects that need to be taken into account when designing a sensory garden, and leave resources if you need to look into this further.

The main thing to remember is to design the garden for the individual or population that will be using it and to remember the needs you have  for the garden, a place to relax in, work in, play in (or combination of) .





sensory garden perspective.jpgretrieved on the 20/07/2012 from byrdlandscapedesign.com 








Design the garden to keep distractions to a minimum. If space is not an issue, create a variety of specialised areas to accommodate a wide variety of therapeutic needs the child may have such as an area for sensory integration activities, another for gross and fine motor skills, and a free-play area.

Gardens are natural multisensory environments; however sensory gardens are planned to maximise the sensory components of the garden (Fowler,Pagliano, 2008).When designing a garden  we need to look into the different senses and how it is useful for the individual

Sight Naturally a garden visually stimulates  use soft colours ,different colours to divide different areas.This can be useful for giving different reasons to relax, stimulate, get shade and  be away from others .This can be done by hedges archway paths.patterns as stoneham points out can be important in helping children to learn to identify different objects and can inspire art, brick work, paving cobbles bark variegated leaves.
when looking at the shape of plents it is good to choose simple distinctive shapes.
Stoneham (19996) suggested
leaves sycamore ,ash
Fruits:apples ,berries
Flowers :daisy ,poppy
Paving ,Hexagon squares    
 Colour can be used in many ways i.e planting grouping of single coloured flowers to create a visual border as (red and Yellow easiest to see by the visually impaired Another way is to plant calming colours.
the shapes of plants are another.
Smell Norfolk argues a therapeutic garden needs to be subtle in its use of perfume although it cannot afford to be too restrained because of the weakness of our olfactory sense.
Many plants imitate curry plant,winter honeysuckle mock orange.
Activated scents which are released when plant pars are crushed (culinary herbs).I myself believe lemon verbena lemon balm welsh onions pineapple sage.
Sound. Norfolk argued One great virtue of a garden is that it takes us away from the clangour of today's cities and gives us a chance once more to listen to the thrush ,the humming of the bees,the rustle of the aspen leaves and the trickle of water cascading from a fountain.
Other sounds that are found in sensory gardens can be wind chimes and naturally plants that attract birds
Marcus and Barnes(1999).  point out that negative sounds should be eliminated as much as possible. Intrusive sounds  such as machinery,traffic are all considered negative distractions in a healing garden and should therefore be excluded from  gardens or masked with the sound of water,screened with vegetation, or a different location should be chosen for the healing garden.

Listening in the garden is a good way of calming people and tuning them to their environment .I myself when working with children living with autism have noticed them stop and listen to birds etc i wouldn't have noticed.As Stoneham (1996) points out worth looking at both natural sounds and ones that can be activated by the gardens users i.e splashing the water hitting chimes and sound sculptures.Stoneham (1996)" sound fences,activated by dragging a stick along a series of tubing or piping can be melodious and fun" (p. 42).

 

 Brookfields 626 JPG retreived on 24/06/12 from Brookfield school .org.

TouchProviding a variety of interesting tactile experiences from rough bark to light touch i.e plants that have have furry leave feather like petals.This is an element that gives sensory areas a different look i.e having plants at different heights or trees with interesting bark next to the path.As Fowler and paglianna (2008) point out gardens can have different surfaces to walk on and can use sensory walls and piping and mosaics.
 orthopaedic 01.jpg retrieved on 25/06/12 from google images


As Stoneham (1996) points out there are many factors to make it interesting
 i.e

Weight : light sawdust heavy clay.
Temperture: sun warmed water cold stones next to it.
Wet and dry: moist and dry soil.
Objects that contain simple shapes circular flowers cubical fruits.
Contrasting densities: moss next to hard stone.

Tasting as  Stoneham  1996 states "taste can be a useful way of demonstrating where food comes from and showing the children the link between growing and eating" .(p41).Naturally there needs to be caution here for children  with the risk of people eating unidentified plants i have always encouraged this in separate controllable areas.

Vestibular rhythmic singing slow rocking .

Proprioception activities that are rhythmic offer resistance pushing pulling sand water.e swings hammerlock statues for climbing .I will be looking more into the vestibular and proprioception when i look into activities that can be initiated in a garden including work and play.

To get more information from the experts have a look at the following links

  www.mcchesney.co.nz An amazing local blog by a chritchurch horticultural therapist she has amazing link great newsletters and has been very helpful when contacted.

 www.communityrestorationtrust.com/horticulturetherapy.html  An interesting Nz community garden with sensory components

 http://www.palmerstonnorth.com/Leisure/Activities/GardensAndEcoRecreation/Detail.aspx?id=23079  This is a new zealand based therepeutic hospital garden

 Amazing website and blog with an affinity of information anecdotal to libraries (especially good for

Alzheimers)http://www.healinglandscapes.org/blog/category/sensory-gardens/

 This is especially aimed at making gardens accesible for physical disabilities has some beautiful creative ideas.accessiblegardens.blogspot.com/.../components-of-accessible-garden.

References 

Fowler, S & Pagliano,P (2008). Multisensory rooms and environments:Controlled Sensory experiences for people with profound and multiple disabilities.London, U.K:Jessica Kingsley Publishers.


 Norfolk, D. (2000). The therapeutic garden. London, U.K: Transworld publishers.

Stoneham, J .(1996). Grounds for sharing : A guide to developing special school sites .Winchester ,England:Learning through landscape trust.