Add a sensory garden to your landscape to stimulate all five senses

Author: Carrie Johnson; Published: Apr 14, 2011; Category: New Mexico Landscaping; Tags: Gardens, Landscape Redo, Residential Landscape; No Comments

MInt adds a taste component to your sensory garden.

All gardens are designed to stimulate your visual sense, but some gardens are designed with all five senses in mind. A sensory garden can provide an experience for seeing, smelling, hearing, touching and tasting. Such gardens range from a small pocket of plantings in your yard for a child to play and learn in, to a large public park with a meditation alcove for reflection and healing.

As with any garden, seating and access are important items to consider. Adequate shade from summer sun and enough warmth in winter is a must. A tamped dirt path is the simplest to utilize, whereas pavers, mulch, small chip gravel or concrete (or a combination of two) is a beautiful and tidy approach where your budget allows.

Naturally some plants fit into two or more of the categories, such as tomato or mint which has both scent and taste. Additionally, you can take the theme even further by limiting your sensory garden to plant material from a particular culture, or only medicinal plants, or perhaps a moongarden. Other items of consideration are the shape of the mature plant: weeping, conical, upright; color of plant and its flowers; overall look: full, sparse, architectural, natural or semi-clandestine.

My favorites in the five categories:

Scent

English Lavender, Chocolate Flower, Scented Geraniums, Rosemary, Licorice Mint Hyssop, Marigolds and Tomato.

Feel

Lambs Ear, Autumn Joy Sedum, Threadleaf Coreopsis, Concrete Leaf Living Stone, Threadgrass and Purple Coneflower.

Taste

Mint, Rosemary, Tomato, Lavender, Garden Sage, Strawberry, Marigolds, Scented Geraniums, Squash (blossom and fruit).

Sight

Of course all of the above with additional interest to: Contorted Filbert, Weeping Atlas Cedar, Torch Lily, Spanish Lavender, Weeping Japanese Maple, Dwarf Globe Blue Spruce, Hens and Chicks, Weeping Cherry, Smoke Tree and topiary junipers.

Hear

A bit more difficult: Bamboo sounds nice with stems knock together, ornamental grasses rustle, large leafed plants sway, some plants attract birds and/or bees. Some trees have seed pods that drop and make a slight and almost hypnotic sound, as are dry leaves dropping in autumn. If you wish to have a sound component that isn’t seasonal, man-made items such as wind chimes, a trickling water feature, wind gong, a fire pit, a rain chain, garden bells, or an outdoor clock are reliable sound-makers.

New landscape vs. redoing an existing landscape

Author: Doug Bishop; Published: Apr 4, 2011; Category: New Mexico Landscaping; Tags: Commercial Landscape, Landscape Redo, Residential Landscape; No Comments

It takes time for trees to establish like this mature sycamore.

There’s nothing like moving into a brand new home that has just been built. Many people in Albuquerque and around the country have had the pleasure of this experience in the last decade because low interest rates and the price of construction have made it manageable economically. In some cases it may even be cheaper than renting. Walking in the house and smelling the new carpet and the fresh paint gives you a sense that you are starting a whole new life as well. You have gone through the process of home buying and now it is yours to enjoy and make it your own.

When you walk into the yard you would like to feel the same way, but that fresh new landscape is not complete. In fact it has just begun. You may feel slighted, thinking that the plants and trees are not significant enough to accent the house. With new construction comes new landscaping, and it is by no means going to look like a jungle of mature material. It takes several years for most specimens to establish a healthy root system, much less start growing to those spires you envision. With time and patience it will evolve though.

One of my favorite projects to be involved in is a (redo) landscape. This could be a residence or a commercial property with landscaping that is full and mature. It may be neglected to a degree, otherwise it would not warrant a change, but likely there are many existing elements that can be included in the new design.

There could be trees that have not had the attention that they deserve, and with a little trimming they can take on a whole new appearance. It can also make room for new elements that can accent the new “face lift” exiting features have received. With a little trimming and accent planting, mature shrubs can be given a whole new function and look.

I’ve had many experiences where people see what we can do to include some mature staples, and they say they never would have thought of the idea, but they love it. Even after an owner has spent years despising that tree or shrub, changing surrounding plants and landscaping often give it a whole new life.

The best part about these jobs is you get the best of both worlds. You have brand new landscaping that looks pristine along with established, existing elements. The larger elements anchor the whole job and give it a feeling of belonging.

We do a lot of new construction landscaping and I enjoy going through neighborhoods or running by jobs that we may have done four, six, or even eight years ago to see how they are coming along. Some are hardly recognizable, because the last time I’d seen them was shortly after the install. It feels good to see the lasting quality of what we do.

Redoing a landscape can give you the same sense of accomplishment, but maybe a bit sooner than new construction. While they cost about the same, over time they both serve their purpose, as they bring life to a house, building, street corridor, or playground.