Designing a Winter Sensory Garden: Colors, Aromas, Sounds, and Textures

A sensory garden includes features, plants, and objects that appeal to our senses. They can be relaxing, visually appealing, or stimulating, with a variety of benefits. In winter, when everything outside is cold and gray, it's important to design an outdoor space that offers tranquility and calm. This is possible with the help of a winter sensory garden. Filling your borders with aromatics and evergreen plants will help to alleviate the winter blues and provide you with a sensory feast. Many winter garden trends can help you create a sensory place full of scent, sound, and movement.

In this blog, our gardening experts share the best tips for making the most of your garden during cold winters and creating a personal sensory space in the dark months ahead.

What is a Sensory Garden

A sensory garden is one that has a collection of plants, elements, and hard landscaping that appeal to our senses or sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Sensory gardens include garden features that enhance accessibility for people of all abilities to enjoy, including those with disabilities. The elements in the sensory garden create an emotional response. It helps us feel more relaxed, happy, and present in a moment.

These areas include containers, raised garden beds, and other elements that allow everyone to enjoy their favorite sensory moments. The warmth of the sun on your face on cold winter days, the smell of grass, juicy strawberries ready to harvest, the melodious whistle of a morning songbird, and the magic of landscape light dancing through delicate evergreens are the moments that you can enjoy in your winter sensory garden.

How to Create a Winter Sensory Garden

You may want to grow lots of plants, but it is wise to choose hardy plants that can survive frost and snow. Planting perennials, evergreens, trees, and shrubs is best done in fall or spring, but take some time to plan what will look nice in your winter garden and provide a sensory moment as you walk around the yard.

Grow Aromatic Evergreen Plants

Smell is one of your five senses, and while it is sometimes overlooked, it is crucial that your sensory garden incorporates all five senses. Aromatic flowers and plants are easier to find in the spring, such as red roses and lilies, but in the winter, it is best to plant evergreens like rosemary, lavender, and thyme. The ideal plants to grow for a sensory winter garden that can be enjoyed year-round are hardy, evergreen, fragrant herbs that provide texture and color.

Plant Colorful Shrubs

Colors (light and dark), shades, and tones play a crucial role in how plants make us feel. It's vital that your garden offers a variety of colors that bring you joy and beauty even on the year's coldest days. Although it may seem like there aren't many options for growing colorful flowering plants in the winter, there are actually many fun and vibrant options. Your personal choice decides which colors you prefer for your outdoor space and matches your own style.

Iceland poppies grow well in colder temperatures and come in a range of yellow and orange hues. Snowdrops are another popular option that will add a vivid, pure white color to your garden. Lastly, don't forget to add holly berries to your yard for a festive burst of red in the holiday season.

Add Visual Contrast

This tip is highly valuable for individuals with visual impairments who have some residual vision. Consider how contrast you can achieve in planting designs by combining leaf and flower colors, in art materials, or on hard surfaces.

In terms of better accessibility, good color contrast is important to help visually impaired people navigate around the yard independently. Consider the contrast of walkways and edgings, furniture, garden features of particular interest, signage, and any obstacles along the route. Add landscape lighting along the paths, steps, trees, under the water feature, and to highlight other garden elements.

Install Water Features

If your garden has space, add a small fountain, pond, or other water feature to add a relaxing, inviting sound to your outdoor space. The sound of water flowing/dipping/, or splashing will make your garden a wonderful escape. Organizers of nature studies find listening activities to be a great way to calm people and connect them with their environment.

Add Edible Plants for Taste

Taste is our most personal sense. The foods you enjoy, and dislike should influence what you grow. When it comes to taste, any vegetable, fruit, or herb can thrive in a sensory garden. Grow plants you enjoy, whether it's Mediterranean herbs, aromatic herbs like sage or rosemary, crisp lettuce, ornamental kale, or colorful root crops.

Choose Plants for Texture

Texture and movement are other elements to add to your landscape when planning a garden this winter. Incorporate a variety of plants with different textures to make your sensory garden even more enjoyable. There are numerous ornamental grasses for winter interest that will bring color and sound to your borders. Plant tall, grasses such as winter wheatgrass or winter rye.

Try growing switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) for an ornamental grass with brown-orange leaves in the fall and winter. If you're growing grasses in pots on a patio or terrace, try putting some of the best winter flowers for pots under it, such as heathers, or cyclamen. These flowers will add pops of color and texture while also providing nectar to early-rising pollinators.

Enhance Your Outdoor Space with Sound

Sound is another important sense in a sensory garden. There's nothing like being greeted with the sweet sound of bird calls to help you escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday busy life. Place bird feeders throughout your garden to create a tranquil, quiet ambiance. Outside spaces can feel silent when there are no leaves on the trees and all water features are switched off. It is very comforting to hear birdsong in winter.

What else could you add to your winter sensory garden for sound? A bird bath. It will give you the best of both worlds: more sounds of birds singing and the soothing waves of water splashing. When the temperature drops below zero, keep an eye on the water and break up any ice sheets.

Get bird feeders to quickly attract birds to your landscape!

The Bottom Line

Create a peaceful winter sensory garden with these tips, say goodbye to the winter blues, and welcome a peaceful oasis of your own. You can blend texture, aroma, and sound to create a garden that thrives during the coldest months and offers you a connection to nature where it is most needed. It also has a positive effect on your mental well-being. Another great idea is to add landscape lighting to your garden in the fall and winter to illuminate your yard. Whether you have a large garden, a balcony, a raised bed garden, or just a few pots on your windowsill, the act of gardening and nurturing plants can do a lot to soothe and heal, inspire and excite.