Year of Green Action

This accessible, sensory-rich family garden promotes the Year of Green Action 2019. It demonstrates how sensory garden design can help children of all abilities connect with nature for their mental and physical wellbeing, a key ambition in the 25 Year Environment Plan.

The garden shows how engaging with the natural world can foster deep, lasting connections that motivate us to care and act for the environment.

Visitors can explore tactile living panels, plants grown for their sensory appeal and children’s miniature garden worlds. A sensory collection of nectar-rich flowers leads to a haven of hidden dens and a nature dome that demonstrates the value of quiet reflective space. Scent, touch and taste are heightened on the patio with containers and vertical panels filled with beautiful edibles and scented leaves and flowers.

The plantings are chosen to appeal to all the senses. Visually, the garden moves from mixed, stimulating colours of sunflowers and sweet peas on the patio and pollinator area to more calming blues/purples/greens of lavender, salvias and grasses in the quieter, calmer spaces towards the end of the space.

The garden is filled with affordable, accessible features that families and schools can replicate in their own green spaces. There are ideas for conserving natural resources, re-using materials and caring for nature, demonstrating how people and wildlife can live in harmony.