Sensory Gardens and Very Special People
When you are very special – that is, if you have a severe
or profound disability – it is very difficult to find a
sanctuary where you can relax and escape from the pressures
of daily life. Every day, you wake to find helpful people
looking after your intimate requirements, deciding what
they think you would like to eat or where you would like to
go. It is not easy to express your choices or preferences
or to say where you would like to be – because the world
finds it hard to understand your efforts at communication.
However, your network of senses gives you great pleasure
and, through the senses, you can enjoy and learn on a very
simple level. Perhaps the only sanctuary you can find is
through a sensory garden that provides solitude, privacy
and an opportunity to explore and communicate with the
natural world – using all your senses.
A
sensory garden can be as simple as … a pot
of soil and a single seed. Natalie has very limited
movements, but she likes to point her finger. It gives her
great pleasure to poke her finger into a pot of moist soil
and then watch a plump seed drop in the hole. Natalie now
works at a garden centre using her greatest skill – “one
finger planting” – and is a keen and valued member of the
gardening team!
A
sensory garden can be as simple as … a
hanging basket, hung inside or outside. It is on a simple
pulley and can be lowered into the lap of a person in a
wheelchair, giving them command over a micro-world that
changes with the seasons. The basket can be planted with
quick growing seeds and bulbs or it can be instantly
transformed by ready-grown plants and it can hold many
colours, smells and textures. Bells or a windmill can be
placed in the basket to enhance the sense of sound and the
movement of puffs of wind.
A
sensory garden can be as simple as … a
window box or a tub on a patio, at the right level to get
“dug in”. Stevie has to spend time in a side-lying frame
each day and his garden is a window box on the floor. It is
at an acute angle so that as he lies sideways, he can move
his two arms together to brush the aromatic herbs and sniff
the smells that drift to him. Plants store volatile
essential oils and when they are touched, the oil is
oxidised and the fragrances released. Rubbing or breaking
the leaves of an aromatic plant releases quite pungent
smells. Artemesia, lavender, santolina and lemon balm all
like trailing hands and soon release their smells.
A
sensory garden can be a simple as … a very
small piece of ground for a group of very special people to
call their own. A group of very special students at a
further education unit spent a year on their plot. Over a
year, the garden offered many pleasures including rolling
over in a patch of thyme. They also grew and dried herbs,
hanging them from the classroom ceiling. Alpine
strawberries grew in pots placed at different levels, from
which the students could pick and eat them as they were
able. Using a redundant sand tray and stand, they grew
small salad vegetables at just the right height for
wheelchairs. The students made a portable garden of
pot-grown plants, such as geraniums, fuchsias, petunias and
Busy Lizzies, to be brought inside for the winter. Cuttings
were taken from plants and a range of scented geraniums
were grown for the smell table, where bowls of dried herbs
were also placed. Herbs were also used to make herb scones.
A
sensory garden can be a specially constructed
space where
anyone can encounter a spiritual uplifting or feeling of
mystery and awe – using their numinous sense. A large
hospital has a small sensory garden outside the children’s
ward. Sally was eighteen months old before she left the
only world she knew, the inside of a hospital room. She was
taken out, complete with all her medical tubes, and placed
beneath a shady bush that she loved. Nearby, she could hear
the sound of water tinkling over pebbles. She turned to the
sound and soon experienced her first toe dabble in gushing,
cold water.
The Dame Evelyn Fox School in Blackburn created a
spiritual sensory garden through
an award from a religious organisation. The project was to
create an outdoor multisensory garden to enhance the sense
of spirituality encountered in many world religions.
Through nature, it provides a place of stillness, privacy,
belonging and a reflective view of life. The entrance
archway has trailing plants and bells attached so that
children can announce their arrival. The three main areas
are dedicated to Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. In the
central area is a sundial, a birdbath and bird table,
reflecting caring for living animals and the passing of
time – common themes to most religions. Each sanctuary has
a tactile, carved symbol and each has a different natural
floor surface. The areas are full of multisensory plants,
trees and the sounds of nature – a miraculous sanctuary – a
sensory garden sanctuary for everyone, regardless of
colour, creed, disability or religion.
Flo
Longhorn
Flo-rich Productions