How to create a sensory garden

Have you heard of a sensory garden?

A sensory garden is a versatile space designed to appeal to each of the five key senses (sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste). It features a myriad of beautiful flowers, plants, landscaping, and other materials that can be arranged in various ways to create a positive sensory experience for its visitors. What you include in a sensory garden depends on the effect you want to achieve. It can be designed to stimulate the senses or create a calming atmosphere, giving you the creative freedom to design a space that suits your needs. 

Sensory gardens are more than just pretty spaces. They are powerful tools for children's growth. These gardens provide a unique space for children to interact with nature and nurture crucial communication skills. By sparking conversations about the garden's sights, sounds, smells, textures, and tastes, we foster dialogue and deepen their understanding of the world, igniting a sense of awe and curiosity.

Creating a sensory garden is a simpler journey than you might imagine. If you're considering one for your early years setting, we've broken it down into each of the senses so you can see what you need, empowering you to create a delightful sensory experience for your young learners with ease and confidence.

Sight

Engaging your eyes in the wonders of a sensory garden is a delightful experience, and planting flowers is a great way to start! Brightly coloured, vibrant flowers such as poppies can help stimulate the senses. In contrast, pastel, muted flowers help to relax and calm them. Planting flowers at varying height levels can help children appreciate the garden even more as they will be able to visualise the beautiful petals all around. With the added flowers, you'll also attract mini beasts such as bees and butterflies to visit your garden, adding another visual element for their eyes to focus on as they gracefully fly around. If you add a water source such as a pond or a water fountain, the reflection of the sun bouncing off the water provides another peaceful and engaging sight for the eyes. Remember to add a bench so you can all sit back and admire your sensory garden.

Smell

Planting a range of herbs and flowers with pleasant scents is the best way to engage a child’s sense of smell in a sensory garden. Lavender is a popular choice of herb for many sensory gardens, but you might also like to try rosemary, sage, mint, or thyme as an alternative. Roses and jasmine are great options as they have beautiful, sweet scents and are often used to create fragrances. Another great way to engage your sense of smell in your sensory garden is ensuring there are patches of grass that you can cut periodically to get that freshly cut grass smell everyone knows and loves.

Sound

Those little bees we've already mentioned aren't only lovely to look at, but they're also a great way to stimulate your sense of sound as they buzz around the garden and pollinate all the flowers. Encourage birds to visit and chirp away a lovely song by installing a birdhouse and leaving out tasty seeds that they'll keep coming back for. Planting plants such as bamboo can create unique sounds when gusts of wind rustle through the leaves and their stems knock together. Don't forget to install some wooden planks or crunchy gravel to create an array of different noises as the children walk through.

Touch

Plants with a variety of different textures are a go-to choice to engage a child’s sense of touch in many sensory gardens. Opt for some plants with coarse textures and others with fine textures. Make sure to ask children which plants feel rough and which ones feel soft, nurturing their thinking skills. Avoid plants that could potentially harm a child, such as those with thorns, and ensure the plants in your garden are all safe to touch and non-toxic.

Taste

Finally, arguably the most delightful of the five senses, the sense of taste! There are so many delicious fruits and vegetables you can plant in a sensory garden. Blackberries and strawberries are great options, as they have a sweet taste that the little ones will love. Watching the berries ripen each day and asking the children how they taste when they're ready to eat is a great opportunity to initiate conversations.

This article has been taken from our latest early years magazine, Little Learners. For more inspirational early years content like this, you can subscribe to receive our magazine for FREE or find out more on our Little Learners homepage.