Sensory Gardens- TASTE

Planting a sensory garden with edible flowers, fruits, herbs and home grown vegetables is an opportunity to scintillate taste buds and experience a variety of textures and flavours.

 A sensory garden needs to be accessible for people living with dementia so being able to grow vegetables and herbs like basil, parsley and mint, kale, baby beetroot or radish and microgreens in windowboxes on a windowsill or in containers is a real plus.

 Herbs are used to flavour food but can also make refreshing and healthy teas or ice cold drinks, as they are full of vitamins and minerals.

 It’s not just the leaves of herbs that can invigorate the taste buds, their edible flowers can too. The purple flower of the chive or a yellow calendula flower can be added to a salad, as can the flowers of lavender, chamomile or sage herbs.

 You can plant edible flowers in the garden so not just the sense of sight benefits from their vibrant colours. Edible flowers include nasturtiums, scented geraniums and rose petals.

 There is such a choice of home grown vegetables and fruits that can be grown in a ‘taste garden’, everything from carrots, peppers, tomatoes to cherries, strawberries and blackberries. They all in their own way provide an opportunity for the sense of taste to play a part in a sensory garden.

Your garden space can provide an array of colour, texture and flavour that ranges from sweet to savoury and everything in between.