five senses in the garden
When I posted about my garden dreaming my friend Zoe (of the paper roll family and Land Art) wrote to tell me about what she has done to make her garden child-friendly. She used an idea from a garden book suggesting that a child-friendly garden should stimulate the 5 senses.
Here is how she has tried to incorporate the 5 senses into her garden (I should mention that she lives on a property in rural Victoria) …
Taste: I bought native plants that you can eat such as midgim berries, mountain peppers, lemon myrtle and a finger lime. I justify this as a reason NOT to spray the blackberries near the house, and having picnics in the orchard has been very satisfying this summer.
Sight: CONTRAST is how I view this - different colours, different shapes, so trees, bushes, grasses, climbers.
Hearing: we have the percussion stump (see picture). I also have a 'bell' tree - an agonis hung with strings of bells.
Smell: a variety of things, not just flowers: the lemon myrtle leaves smell fantastic. I also have a curry bush and a boronia that smells of aniseed.
Touch: All sorts of things, again I go for contrast like banksia seed pods or trees with different barks.
Other child friendly elements in the garden are
- animals spread through out the garden (those in the pictures were bought from a great native nursery in Melbourne)
- glazed dishes down on the ground with water for the birds (too shallow for drowning) - we've had lots of wrens having a bath and the gang gangs drinking from them.