As fifth-graders — maybe it’s preschoolers these days — know, there are five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. In college they added a sense of sophistication and called them visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile, solely to make the collegiates sound smarter than a 5th-grader.
But wait, there’s more. Sensory scientists suggest that there are at least nine to 21 senses, depending on how you define a “sense,” according to sensorytrust.org.
They include, but are not limited to, such National Spelling Bee mind-bogglers as thermoception (sense of temperature; notiception (pain); equilibrioception: (sense of balance); interoception (sense of hunger and thirst); and internal senses like blood pressure and bladder stretch.
I interrupt this article for an important announcement. DO NOT ASK ME what “bladder stretch” is. I don’t want to know…don’t need to know. It’s not a gardening term anyway, so it won’t appear on any pop quizzes.
Clarence Schmidt (Clarence Schmidt)
Since many common plants appeal to more than one sense, you likely already have the beginnings of a sensory garden in your yard. These types of gardens entice a visitor to experience and enjoy the garden with all of their senses.
Sound. To stimulate the sense of sound, choose flora that make noise when the wind blows through them, such as false indigo (rattling seed pods), bamboo, ornamental grasses or a balloon flower (popping sound when squeezed).
Your serene soundscape could include wind chimes, and water features with soothing humpback whale sounds, and ribbiting frogs. Bird feeders and birdbaths can draw the attention of songbirds, such as blackbirds, chickadees and those crazy nuthatches.
Don’t rule out those nocturnal singers, the katydids, and their brothers, the katydid-nots.
I think Ripley’s Believe It or Not might have missed this one, but several plant species have been observed to emit sounds, particularly when under stress or injury. These sounds are ultrasonic, meaning they are outside the range of human hearing.
The Natural History Museum (the one in the United Kingdom; nhm.ac.uk ) found that many plants — corn, wheat, and cactus, for example — emit sounds when they are stressed. I do too.
For example, here’s what a tomato plant sounds like when its stems are cut: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/april/plants-emit-ultrasonic-popping-sounds-when-stressed.html.
Does it sound like Morse Code or bubble wrap being popped? I can’t decide if it sounds like taps or 12 trumpet solos.
Given this healthy dose of what-the-heck-were-they-thinking, one must understand that this is why aliens don’t visit us. We have stumbled into a dimension where logic has taken a permanent vacation. Yet, it’s a matter of cosmic importance that leads me think that the Earth is indeed flat and held up by a giant space turtle.
Perhaps I shouldn’t believe everything I think.
Sight: Adding an attractive visual effect to a sensory garden can be as simple as adding plants with contrasting colors, light, shadows, shapes, textures, foliage, blossoms, and habits, like creeping, climbing, trailing, bushy or upright.
Bleeding heart’s heart-shaped blossoms add color and visual interest to a sensory garden. Butterfly weed attracts butterflies. Zinnias also attract butterflies with its showy flowers. Pinks have a welcoming fragrance and a soft color.
For a fun sight, take your child, grandchild or great grandma and grab a dandelion that has matured into a round, white, fluffy seed head. Make a wish and fill yourself with the hope and anticipation for your wish to come true. Then blow with all of the air you’ve got in your tank and watch those “blow balls” disperse seeds. Show your neighbors this trick while in their yard.
Smell: Anise Hyssop (Licorice-like scent), hyacinths, Lily-of-the-valley, lilac, heliotrope, sweet pea, honeysuckle. sweet alyssum, gardenias, roses and citronella are all so fragrant that you can smell them in the next zip code. Herbs such as thyme, oregano, rosemary, lavender can also stimulate the sense of smell.
Consider growing some of them in hanging baskets so that their scent is at nose level. Also, since the fragrance is concentrated in calm weather but disperses in the wind, provide some protection for flowers.
Flowers have the potential to trigger memories of special places or people. Some plants release scent naturally without the need for touch (roses), while others don’t release a scent until they are rubbed or crushed (geraniums).
Taste: Rosemary, thyme, basil, lemon balm, garlic, chives (onion-like flavor), rhubarb, oregano, nasturtium (peppery flavor), pansy, plumeria, mint (peppermint or spearmint) and Swiss chard offer a buffet of tastes.
However, make sure you know the parts of the plants that you are eating are edible. For example, eating the leaves of tomato or potato plants will make you sick.
For taste, add a variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs to a sensory garden.
Touch: Plant a variety of textures including rough, smooth, fuzzy, even sticky. Grow aromatic plants along pathways so their scent will be released when you brush against them.
The Mimosa pudica is a very sensitive touch-me-not plant known for its aversion to being touched. It earned this title because of the plant’s rapid response to droop after being disturbed.
Lamb’s ear (furry, fuzzy foliage); silky wormwood (soft foliage); wooly thyme (soft hairs), velvety rose petals, the leathery surface of a southern magnolia, and the tender bloom of an orchid all offer a tactile experience.
Some orchids have adapted their flowers to look like insects, which fools bugs into trying to mate with them. Frankly, it’s not a pretty sight.
Some orchids can mimic other things, like the Monkey orchid (looks just like a monkey), Venus slipper orchid, Donkey Orchid, and the Flying Duck orchid. These orchids stand out for their distinctive shapes, colors, and sometimes their scent, but mostly for their strange names.
It’s too bad that intelligence is not considered a sense. My orchids can outwit other life forms, and so can my Venus flytrap (currently choking on a common house fly).
Then there’s the sense of wonder. It’s a matter that merits intellectual scrutiny. I’ll ask a 5th-grader.
Schmidt is a Poway resident with over 40 years of gardening experience.