Five simple ways to create a sensory garden at home

Creating a garden that fires up all five senses doesn’t take a landscaping expert or a massive budget. With a few simple hacks, you can transform anything - from a sprawling flower bed to a window box - into a sensory garden that helps regulate your child’s emotions and gives them a living laboratory to experiment in. And the best bit is - they can help you do it.

Sensory gardens are a calming resource for children who feel overwhelmed or overstimulated by screens and school, but they're beneficial to all kids. They encourage them to explore and experiment - to develop their curiosity about the natural world around them.

They are great for physical development too. Digging in mud or hunting for painted stones helps develop balance, coordination and physical strength, while picking tiny mint leaves to nibble helps build fine motor skills.

Here are 5 quick and easy ways to create your own sensory garden in whatever size outdoor space is available.

1. Set up a ‘touch and feel’ plant station

A few different plants with contrasting textures will appeal to your child’s sense of touch. Try lamb’s ear, with its soft, fuzzy leaves, alongside bumpy silver sage and a couple of fleshy, smooth succulents. You don't need a whole flower bed if you don’t have one available - a few pots on a sunny windowsill will do just as well.

Ask your child to describe what they're feeling and whether they can come up with their own names for the plants. Slowing down and gently touching the leaves can tackle the feeling of being overwhelmed, lowering cortisol levels and helping to calm anxiety.

Also try: Mixing some smooth stones with rough lava rocks or porous pumice so your child can feel the difference between the textures. The smooth stones stay unexpectedly cool on hot days so you can place them on your child’s palm for a surprise.

2. Build a sound wall

Mount a pallet, a piece of lattice or even an old drying rack or baby gate to a fence and hang some noisy items on it. Items like old pots and pans, cake tins and plastic bottles make a range of different sounds when banged or tapped.

Give your child a wooden spoon or stick and invite them to explore the different pitches and volumes each material produces. For small spaces, create upcycled wind chimes by stringing up old cutlery, keys or even seashells from your last holiday. Can your child identify the direction and strength of the wind?

Also try:Quaking grass grows paper-like seed heads that resemble little lanterns and rustle when the wind blows. But shhhhh - you have to be very quiet to hear them.

3. Create a mini herb garden

Getting younger children to stop eating things they’ve picked up in the garden is usually an achievement, but this time you’re going to encourage them to do just that. Not dirt or random bits of twigs but deliciously scented herbs. This hack is a double-hitter - appealing to the senses of both taste and smell.

Hanging baskets are great for making small, self-contained herb gardens, but if you want to recycle you could punch drainage holes in the bottom of some yoghurt pots of tin cans. Cool mint, woody rosemary and spicy chives all have strong flavours and can be grown cheaply from seed.

You could let children decide which herbs they want to grow and help them start the seeds off in a small pot on a warm windowsill before transferring them outside.

Also try:Sugar-snap peas are easy to grow and appeal to at least three senses - they make a satisfying snapping sound when broken, their shells are smooth and waxy, and they taste crunchy and sweet.

Here's our article on how to start growing plants at home - featuring tips from Tayshan Hayden-Smith that can be done anywhere from a garden to a small balcony space.

4. Add in some visuals

Gardens are usually already feasts for the sense of sight but why not get your children to craft some eye-catching additions? On your next walk, collect some smooth stones that they can decorate with waterproof paint before placing them along a path or around a flower bed, or simply hide them around the garden or yard as a treasure hunt for their friends.

If you have any old CDs lying around, string them together as light reflectors. Hang them from a tree branch, hook or even the washing line to watch them create light patterns that dance across the garden.

Also try: Make a fabric weathervane by tying old ribbons or strips of old clothes to a high branch or the top of your sound wall.

5. Make a mud kitchen

This can be anything from a wooden structure containing washing bowls to a single bucket or patch of bare earth. You’ll need some old pots and pans, plastic cups, wooden spoons - whatever kitchen utensils you can spare.

Younger children will have endless fun making a fabulous mess - mixing potions, baking mud pies, inventing games. Mud kitchens make a tactile experience that sparks imagination and builds motor skills.

Also try: Mix up some seed bombs by stirring clay-heavy soil with a small amount of water and a packet of wildflower seeds. Get the kids to roll the mud into small balls and let them dry before throwing them somewhere that you want the flowers to grow.

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