sensory garden - touchi
Most of us plan our gardens to look nice - colourful, lush and leafy, or at least, green and tidy.
What if we planned our gardens to appeal to all of our senses?

To look appealing, to smell sweet or herby, to sound gentle and relaxing, to feel soft or smooth, to taste delicious? What pleasures our gardens would bring!

New Years are often a time to start on a program of self care - less alcohol and more water, less sitting and more moving, less rushing and more mindfulness, fewer fries and more fruits.

Getting in touch with our bodies and minds, and taking better care of them.

 

Sensory Gardens - Soft Touch

fluffy

So we're embarking on some sensory self-care, with the help of our outdoor spaces.

 

A warm enveloping hug. The firm fingers of a masseur untying the knots in your neck. Stroking a pet's soft fur, or the fuzzy warmth of your favourite sweater. Aaah, bliss...

Touch can bring us a lot of pleasure and calming relaxation - and there's a lot of tactile pleasure to be had from a garden, if you know where to feel for it.

Soft kitty, warm kitty,
little ball of fur.
Sleepy kitty, happy kitty,
purr purr purr.

 

furry plants

Did you know? There's a few plants that have a soft furry feel, like fur, or woollen sweaters, or velvet. These here are among the most soft.

Clockwise from top left :
lamb's ears or bunny's ears (Stachys lanata), named because they are so strokeably soft to touch (its botanic species name, 'lanata', means woolly in Latin, hence lanolin, the oil from sheep fleece, is wool-oil);

native woolly bush (Adenanthos);

silverbush (Convolvulus cneorum);

pewter plant (Strobilanthes gossypinus) Gossypium is the botanic name for cotton, so pewter plant's 'gossypinus' means "like a cotton wool ball".

 

If you enjoy this word-play with plant names, you can discover much more about a plant from its name in our post What Plant Names Can Tell Us

 

fuzzy plants In some cases, plants have evolved to grow a fur coat of fine hairs, to protect from hot sun and prevent water evaporation; this gives them a soft feel, and often a silvery look.
You'll find a lot of them in our post on Silver-Leaved Plants.

Many Mediterranean shrubs - lavender , curry bush , cat thyme (Teucrium) - are soft-to-touch with a suede-like sensation; it's why they also appreciate a dry climate, where (like a pair of suede shoes) those fine hairs don't experience humidity and rain.

 

Clockwise from top left :
softly-strokeable grey leaved plants include licorice plant (Helichrysum);
buddleias Lochinch and Morning Mist have super-soft new leaves;
and so does silver-leaf gazania.

Cotton lavender or lavender cotton (Santolina) here, and native yellow buttons (Chrysocephalum), make a perfect sensory pairing in dry climate gardens (and as far north as Sunshine Coast-Wide Bay Burnett in inland or airy sites.)

Both have soft-touch grey foliage, and daisy flowers reduced to a central yellow disc, fuzzy and soft like the leaves.

 

cardboard palm

On some plants, the surface hairs are so fine they are invisible to the naked eye - but our sensitive fingertips can detect and appreciate them.

The dwarf cardboard palm (Zamia furfuracea) gets its common name because the leaflets along the stem are firm and stiff, and have a slightly olive-brown colouring.

The Latin word 'furfuraceous' means 'flaky as if covered in bran', which is oddly specific.

Touch it and it feels more like a very short bristly suede, not furry but definitely furfur-ish!

The flowerspikes have an interesting knobbly texture to them too - there's lots going on with this plant.

 

lion's ear

Touch the velvet buds of the orange lion's ear flowers (Leonotis) and you'll appreciate how they got their common name - though how anyone got close enough to stroke a lion's ear and live to tell the tale, we don't know!

Leonotus have papery calyces - the bit that holds the petals to the stem - to enjoy the feel of, that grow in rounded honeycomb-like clusters, once the furry flowers have faded.

 

rabbit's foot fern

Here's another animal at large in the plant world!

The common name of this gorgeously lacy-leaved fern is rabbit's foot (Humata or or Davalia) - though many think it looks more like a big tarantula than a fluffy little bunny!

Don't let it scare you. Those hairy 'legs' that hang over the edge of the pot are really aerial roots that help the plant absorb moisture from the air.

 

fuzzy plants Perhaps surprisingly, many succulents have a furry, fuzzy-felt feeling too, especially bear paws (Cotyledon tomentosa), top left; and panda plant or chocolate soldier (Kalanchoe tomentosa) top right.

We're continuing the furry animal theme!

Did you notice both their species plant names have the word 'tomentosa'? This Latin word means 'covered in hairs'.
It's all about that water-retention and sun protection.

 

Other plants with a velvet feel originate in rainforests, or subtropical zones, and the furry surface is hiding on the underside of the leaf.
The upper surface is smooth and glossy, so the abundant rain rolls off easily.

You'll encounter this in velvet calathea bottom right, which gets its common name because each leaf is gently furry beneath;
and in bull magnolia bottom left, whose leaves are glossy on top with a suede-soft reverse.

 

fuzzy plants Some of our favourite native plants range from full-on furry, to softy-silky, to fuzzy-felty.

They've evolved these surface protections to stand up to the extreme temperatures here - cold and hot and wind and sun.

Close your eyes and have a little fondle of some of the plants in your garden!

Clockwise from top left :
silver-leaved emu bush (Eremophila) - especially the varieties Kalbarri Carpet, Silver Ball and Blue Horizon;

kangaroo paws (Anigozanthos and Macropidia) with their fuzzy-velvety flowers and stems;

softly silky silver wattle (Acacia) has bonus fluffy pompom flowers too!;

and downy ziera (Zieria), their new leaves super-soft to touch.

 

some banksia flowers

Last and arguably best of the fuzzy-felt natives is the Banksia family.

Banksias give you a huge range of sensations and textures throughout the year, from pointy and feathery and leathery leaves,
to wiry and silky and bristly flowerheads;
from furry-felt new leaves
and downy-suede new cones,
to some awesomely rugged woody-bark mature pods.

All the feels!

 

banksia leaves and pods

It's a huge family of plants too with lots of members providing lots of different touch sensations - there's lots to explore in every part of the plant.

Their flowers start as firm slender 'candles',
open up slowly into fatter flowers,
and stay on the bushes for a long time,
eventually becoming those woody pods -
so whatever month you encounter a banksia, there'll be something to feel and fondle.

 


ripple texture

Sensory Gardens - Ripple Touch

They're not furry or felty, fluffy or prickly - but they are well worth feeling!

We call these the 'ripple' plants, as they have a rippled, ridged, ruched, wrinkled texture.

Clockwise, from top left : peperomia (Peperomia) has super-crinkly-wrinkly leaves ;
extremely wiggly bird's nest lasagne fern (Asplenium antiquum nidus var plicatum 'Lasagna' - phew!) reminds us of a Streets Viennetta;
red secret alocasia (Alocasia cuprea) is ripped like a six-pack;
and the new leaves of maidenhair fern (Adiantum), are gently ruffled and layered, soft to the touch.

 


Sensory Gardens - Fluffy Touch

soft touch plants
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?

O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?

The poet Francis Darwin Cornford knows where it's at.

 

soft touch plants

One of the great pleasures of walking through a field of grasses is running your hand along the tops of the flowerheads, feeling the fluffy awns, sensing the smooth (or rough!) leaf blades gently bend beneath your hand.

Some grass flowerheads are so downy-fluffy they feel like baby bunnies or kittens.

 

Take a calming relaxing moment next time you pass by a flowering grass, and run your hand slowly down one of the stems from root to tip. You'll feel a difference in fluffiness between newly opened flowerheads, silky and dense; and fully mature ones.

Clockwise, from top left : smooth upright foxtail spear grass (Austrostipa), (check out the floaty-light wallaby grass (Austrodanthonia) too);
chinese silver grass (Miscanthus);
swamp grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides);
purple fountain grass (Pennisetum advena Rubrum).

For parts of the garden that get a wetter soil, you can't go past the native restio tassel cord rush - smooth stems erupt into feathery-light ferny fronds.

 

soft touch plants One of the reasons grasses are so fluffy is the flowerheads often comprise clusters of fine slender stamens layered around a central cylinder.

The finer and more slender these stamens, and the more densely packed, the fluffier the flower.

They're very similar in construction to a bottlebrush - and a bottlebrush flower!

Here's some of our favourite fluffy-brush flowers that we enjoy patting and stroking in the nursery.

Clockwise, from top left : powder puff (Calliandra) is a mass of pompom puffs in full flower;

bottlebrush (Callistemon) have long soft fluffy flowers;

NZ Christmas bush (Metrosideros)are just as pompom-fluffy as powder puff plants;

and bracelet honey myrtle (Melaleuca), like a more slender bottlebrush.

 

soft touch plants

Amongst our range of plants are some fantastically springy bouncy plants that are heaps of fun to play with!

It's almost impossible to resist giving them a little friendly pat on the head as you pass.

 

Clockwise from top left:
Irish moss (Selagina) - You'll see some of these little tuffets planted out like a carpet in our QLD Garden Expo stand;
there's a longer looser form called Scotch moss too;

cushion bush (Scleranthus) - like the Selagina moss, there's a tight-bun form and a more loosey-goosey, longer-stemmed form;
no mow grass (Zoysia), which grows in natural rounded hummocks;
and pink and white sea thrift (Armeria), which pops up pink and white papery balls of flowers above the grassy tufts.

 

floofy plants

Slightly less firm, more floofy, just as irresistibly pat-able, are these two lovely groundcovers :

baby's tears (Soleirolia), and star creeper (Pratia).

Both will spread along the ground, low and dense, when planted into the garden;
and both form these rounded open natural mounds, perfect for petting, when planted in a pot

 


Sensory Gardens - Spiky Touch

spiky plants

We're not suggesting you encourage the notorious gympie-gympie plant to flourish, bringing with it a lifetime of pain and agony... that would be a sensory touch experience like no other!

But why not add a few spiky-spiny specimens to your garden, for a little safe prickle - like the chili in a salsa?

 

Some plants have a few hidden thorns to contend with - some dramatic and ornamental; some secretive and functional, as a form of defence against being eaten.

Did you know: the closer to the ground a holly leaf grows, the more indented and prickly the edges?
Leaves that grow on the tops of holly bushes and trees, out of the reach of passing herbivorous browsers, are often completely smooth around the leaf rims.

Defence, you see. A plant can't run away, but it can protect itself.

 

The shrubs here have the benefit of making excellent security hedges; to deter people from coming in to your garden, and pets from getting out.

Clockwise from top left: flying dragon citrus (Poncirus), barberry (Berberis), holly (Ilex), cane berry plants - raspberry, blackberry, youngberry, boysenberry (Rubus species)

 

spiky plants

And when it comes to touch sensations in the grden, we can't go past the uber-spiny plants, cacti!

 

As every sado-masochist knows, a little pain makes the pleasure all the sweeter.

Or at least, a garden made of of contrasts - smooth and rough, fluffy and shiny, soft and spiky, flat and wrinkled - is far more interesting to engage with! Clockwise from top left: almost-soft
monkey's tail (Cleistocactus),
twinflower agave (Agave geminiflora), smooth-stemmed with a sharp tip
thimble or nipple cactus (Mammillaria),
and the hyper-thorny crown of thorns (Euphorbia milii).
Who would think this last plant belonged to the same family as the soft-leaved winter-red poinsettia?

 


feel your garden

Sensory Gardens - Touch

Were you told to "look with your eyes, not with your hands" , as a child?
To not touch or pick anything, especially when you were in someone else's garden?

 

Children know best - part of the joy of gardening is getting down and dirty, sticking your hands into the soil, picking up a worm or fashioning a daisy chain.

 

In your own garden, get hands-on and touch everything!

 

Push your fingers into the soil, and sense the temperature get cooler and the soil get damper to the touch, the deeper you go.

Kick off your thongs and soothe your hot feet on cool grass.

feel your garden

Run your fingers through a tree's feathery branches, and hug its rough cracked bark;

crunch a dry papery autumn flowerhead, (and hear the crackle - double the sensory experience!);

turn over a satiny-smooth fernleaf to reveal the furry spores beneath.

 

Close your eyes. Feel the warmth of sunlight on your skin, or a gentle breeze cooling you.

 

A sensory garden of touch is a secret world of pleasure for gardeners.

You never know what you might discover with your fingertips - and toes!