Sensory garden ideas - sound!

We are going to write a series of articles giving sensory garden ideas, We all take our senses for granted but what if you loose one of your senses? Research shows that your other senses become stronger. In the garden we can add elements to appeal to all our senses and everyone can benefit from them as it leads to good mental and physical well being,

Today we are going to focus on adding sound to your garden.

Bringing sounds into your garden is simple. Here are our top tips:

1. Add a bird feeder to encourage garden birds to come into your garden and have a sing!

2. Add water. The sound of water can be very calming as well as attracting wildlife. SO add a water feature. You don’t have to have a large garden – you can make a pond from a container and many self contained water features are quite small. Visit our Clyst St Mary garden centre for further inspiration on this.

3. Think about planting plants that rustle in the wind. Plants such as bamboo are perfect or the hardy bottlebrush plant has bright red flowers that turn into seed heads that rustle in the wind. This plant can grow quite big so don’t be afraid to trim it to the size you want.

4. Add wind chimes. Test them out before you buy as they have different pitches. Choose the one that relaxes you the most.

So next time you are out in the garden, sit quietly and listen to the sounds. How many sounds do you hear? Bees buzzing, birds chirping, plants rustling….