Gardening with your Senses the ultimate experience

Liven up your landscape by creating a sensory garden. Most of us pick our plants based on favorite colors, height combinations, and textural contrasts. But why stop with visuals? Bring fragrance to your garden by planting sweet-scented roses, banana shrubs, or sweet olives. Enjoy the low buzzing of bees and cheerful chirping of birds by integrating pollen-packed flowers like lantana, bee balm, and coneflowers, or by installing bird friendly havens like ‘Savannah’ hollies, American beautyberries, and ‘Sweet Bay’ magnolias. Incorporate an amalgamation of textures, be they smooth and sleek, sharp and pointed, or soft and downy. Add a touch of taste to your garden, as well—whether you prefer fall crops like broccoli and cabbage, citrus fruits, springtime strawberries, or summer ripened tomatoes and peppers, no garden is complete without homegrown harvests. Gardening is not simply for seeing, after all; it’s about the experience. As you plan ahead for next year’s garden, veer away from one-dimensional plots and excite all of your senses by designing for sight, scent, sound, feeling, and flavor.

Garden Visions

Build a visually attractive landscape by planting strong bursts of color; masses of single hues yield the greatest impact, both for gardeners and wildlife alike. Waves of golden yellow daffodils, for instance, echo beautifully against bubblegum pink tulips and walls of lemony yellow or pure white snapdragons, creating a harmonious balance in wintry landscapes. Spring and summertime clumps of vibrant yellow, orange, and scarlet welcome the friendly flicker of butterflies, bees, and fall fluttering hummingbirds. Invite these amicable visitors with perennials like ‘Moonbeam’ coreopsis, ‘Dallas Red’ lantana, and pineapple sage. Integrate colorful crops like strawberries, tomatoes, and peppers for added seasonal allure, and brighten small vegetable patches with marigolds, nasturtium, or violas. Rotate annuals and vegetables seasonally, while planting perennials and more permanent fruits as well to ensure year-round color and interest. Utilize mulch for aesthetics; complement your blooming beauties with russet colored pine straw or cypress mulch, or add a swathe of chocolate black pine bark for a more dusky coating.

Hardscapes like solitary stones and garden art or furniture create focal points and appeal, as they gingerly pull gazes upward; soften garden ornaments with varying plant heights and textures, so as to ease visual transitions. Situate tufts of pink muhly grass behind wrought iron benches and round off the arms with potted compact Tibouchina or blue plumbago. Assuage angular sides and backs of any stones with ‘Peacock’ moss or spikemoss, and permeate gaps between rough-edged stepping stones with ‘Chocolate Chip’ ajuga, peppermint, or lemon scented thyme.

Get the most out of visiting wildlife in your yard by hanging birdfeeders and houses, as well as providing butterfly pools and birdbaths. Consider also adding a small pond or potted water garden, so as to introduce fish to your display. Illuminate flowerbeds and water gardens, along with footpaths, trees, and décor with solar or electric garden lights; the best sensory gardens promise visual intrigue both day and night. White flowering plants like moonvines, night blooming jasmine, Bacopa, and impatiens also highlight evening gardens, since their iridescent blooms glow vividly against the night sky.

Scent-illating Blossoms

Energize your garden with scented foliage and flowers all year. Enjoy the honey-soaked blossoms of sweet alyssum from fall through spring. Their tiny leaves and petite honeycomb blooms prove perfect for carpeting beds of winter flowering camellias, perennial borders, and vegetable gardens. Mix them in pansy beds with flowering stock, tulips, and snapdragons, or nestle them beside walkways and patio benches to better savor their perfume. Sweet olives, another excellent choice for spicing up wintry landscapes, emit their delectable sweet cologne from early fall through spring. Profusions of small pearly white blossoms magnificently cloak 10-foot-tall shrubs of olive green leaves, as they generously extend their pleasant perfumes across much of the landscape.

Other cool season bloomers vying for attention with their delightful aromas include ‘Opal Innocence’ nemesia, Mahonia bealei, cilantro, rosemary, and thyme. ‘Carolina’ jessamine opens its lemony yellow trumpets in mid February, followed sweetly by ‘Confederate’ jasmine, honeysuckle, banana shrubs, and gardenias. As spring ignites into summer, citrus blossoms unfurl, and rose buds find themselves once again exposed. ‘Dwarf Cardamom’ gingers, lemon grass, and lemon scented geraniums offer delicious aromas from their fragrant leaves. Night blooming jasmines and moon vines wonderfully reign on summer nights, while hot southern days are governed amiably by ‘Butterfly’ gingers, plumerias, and herbs like basil, oregano, lavender, and mint. Southern magnolias like ‘D.D. Blanchard’, ‘Alta’, and ‘Little Gem’ bid a cordial farewell to the growing season, as their luxurious star-shaped blossoms remarkably imbue the garden.

Echoes in the Landscape

Create a soft, melodious landscape with ornamental grasses like Miscanthus sinensis, pink muhly grass, and purple flowering fountain grass. Their slim, supple blades swish rhythmically with the wind from spring through fall, adding movement as well, with their low, gentle rock. Nandinas, along with ‘Boston Sword’ ferns, ‘Queen’ palms, and bamboo also offer soothing sounds as they gingerly rustle their wispy limbs. Shade trees like ‘Swamp Red’ maples, river birch, and crape myrtles contribute to nature’s melody in the fall, as the dry autumn air casually whips beneath them.

Add to nature’s elegant tune by enticing the subtle murmur of bees with perennial borders of Salvia sinaloensis, ‘Jethro Tull’ coreopsis, pineapple sage, ‘New Gold’ lantana, echinacea, and ‘Homestead’ verbena. Plant a wintry wall of ‘Pacific Giant’ delphiniums and ‘Amazon’ dianthus, and then sow summer flowering fences of ‘State Fair’ zinnias or ‘Mammoth’ yellow sunflowers. Attract birds to your garden as well to enjoy their spirited songs of spring. Wind chimes, along with small fountains, ponds, and waterfalls can also enhance the garden, as their relaxing sounds invite comfort and peace.

Landscape Sensations

Texture, one of the most important features to landscape design, comes in a variety of forms. Assimilate slick, glossy leaves of ‘Dwarf Cardamom’ gingers, split leaf philodendrons, fatsias, or agapanthus beside sharply pointed Mahonia bealei, Aucuba serratifolia, and spreading plum yew. Soften bold foliage beds with feathery cultivars like ‘Boston Sword’, ‘Japanese Painted’, and ‘Autumn’ ferns; lighten sun-loving hedges with airy ornamental grasses, variegated privet, mock orange, or primrose jasmine. Integrate the downy smooth leaves of lamb’s ear, dusty miller, and Artemisia amid combination planters and beds; heighten patio container pool plantings with fuzzy ‘Compact’ tibouchina and dicliptera. Lacy leaved bedding plants like ‘Diamond Frost’ euphorbia, ‘Snow Princess’ lobularia, erysimum, and linaria look sensational when spilling from baskets of ‘Supertunia Vista Bubblegum’, ‘Plentifall’ pansies, and cyclamen. Vegetable gardens, like the rest of our landscape, can also boast variety. Offset smooth-textured onions with frilly-leaved carrots in fall gardens, and balance ruffled, serrated leaves of tomato plants with the more polished foliage of peppers.

A Taste of the Garden

Celebrate the true essence of gardening each season with homegrown fruits and vegetables. Citrus trees like satsumas, oranges, lemons, and limes offer a sweet surprise in late fall and winter, while juicy red strawberries anxiously wait to be picked from December through June. Summer welcomes gardeners with fresh ripened blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries, as well as succulent peaches, pears, and figs. Luscious fiery orange persimmons hang with pride against October’s autumn sky.

Rotate seasonal vegetables and herbs; spring and summer gardens promise tomatoes, peppers, squash, okra, and cucumbers. Broaden your planting (and meals) with fresh zucchini, eggplant, cantaloupe, and watermelon. Fall vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage, along with onions, mustard greens, lettuce, and carrots, prove perfect for cooking on cool, chilly nights. Integrate extra flavor into spring and fall gardens with culinary herbs like basil, cilantro, dill, rosemary, and chives. ✦