Use your Senses

When doing a program on Design, whether it's Garden Design or Landscape Design I always finish off the same way. I tell people to use their senses in the garden.

The sense of Sight would come first as looking at our gardens gives us such pleasure. Your garden is your art form, enjoy looking at it.

The sense of Sound is one that is often ignored. Here on Long Island it's pretty hard to find a place that's truly quiet. When I go hiking on the Walt Whitman Trails I can still hear the parkway. Even in secluded, million dollar areas I seem to always hear somebodies lawn service or leaf blowers being used.

Our home is near Old Country Road (ah ha, part of where the name comes from). While this road looks quite rural, we still hear the traffic during busy hours. By adding things in the garden to mask the man-made sounds, I find it a more relaxing place. Wind chimes and running water are my first choice. Bird sounds are excellent too.

The sense of Taste. From what I've been reading, vegetable gardens are back in fashion. While I haven't had a vegetable garden in years, I've always grown herbs for our use. These Garlic chives were a pass-along plant and I think they are so cool looking!

The sense of smell is one we tend to think of more often but do we really use it? I just love seeing somebody walking around the garden with a big spot of pollen on their face or nose. You know exactly what they did, they stopped to smell the flowers. (Well maybe not this Peony but many flowers will leave pollen on your face.)

The sense of touch is one one that has so many different ways to be enjoyed. First to mind is the soft touch of some plants like the Stachys byzantina (Lambs ears) shown here. What kid isn't glad to be handed one of these leaves to hold in their pocket?

The sense of touch can be expanded to wonderful plants that when touched, release a second sense, the sense of smell. When I show the garden to friends I can't resist picking a leaf or a bloom from here or there and having them do the scratch and sniff test. Mondarda is in the mint family and the foliage smells heavenly.

The sense of touch is so important that I also had to include a third photo. To me, there's nothing like the feel of potting up new plants, burying your hands into that warm potting soil, and lovingly patting down your new babies in their nice pots. I think this is what I look forward to the most right now as spring is almost in reach.


Finally, don't forget your sense of humor! Now I don't have a toilet bowl planted in my garden, if I did the lid would be down (come on, this has to be a man's planting). But I do have lots of funny things here and there. We all have a different sense of humor but why not consider having something in your garden that makes you smile every time you see it?

What's your favorite sense in the garden?

What do you plant to scratch that itch?