Our gardens give us beautiful plants and flowers to look at, but there is so much more to plants than just a pretty face!

Find out how giving just a little thought to your plant choices can provide a feast for all five of your senses!

There are many reasons for choosing the plants we do for our gardens – it may be their growing habit, their beautiful flowers or their suitability for a particular situation – and all help to create beautiful gardens that we love to look at.

While it’s natural to focus on visual appeal, a really special garden will delight your other senses too – and by making a few careful plants choices, you can make sure you do just that!

There are, of course, lots of plants to choose from – here are our favourites…

Touch

Our favourite touch sensation has to be the leaves of Stachys Byzantia ‘Lamb’s Ears’ – as soft to the touch as you imagine a lamb’s ear would be.

This ground-covering perennial is reasonably drought-tolerant once established and makes a great choice for a dry border or gravel garden.

Other top ‘touch’ choices would be the cotton-wool like Salvia Argentea (silver sage), and prickly Eryngium (sea holly) with it’s spiny leaves and thistle-like flowers.

Taste

Chillies are our top taste choice because they pack a powerful punch in a small package – and when you’re plants are covered in ripening chillies, they’re great to look at too!

You could also choose rosemary, strawberries, chives, carrots…

Sight

Brightly coloured flowers are the obvious choice to delight our eyes, but don’t forget that the foliage of some plants can be just as eye-catching – which is why we’ve chosen the Japanese maple as our ‘eye candy’. Attractive in all seasons, they are at their prime in Autumn and some also have beautiful bark which provides Winter interest too.

Our top flower choices would be the bright blue flowers of Nigella (love in a mist) and of course striking sunflowers!

Sound

The best plants to produce sound in the garden have to be grasses which give a gentle rustling in the slightest of breezes. Offering great structure through their architecture too, these plants also provide beautiful seed heads in Autumn.

Alternatives would be bamboos and sweetcorn plants which offer their own rustling sounds, and if you simply don’t have room to add any more plants you can always introduce water or wind chimes.

Smell

Top in our choice for aroma has to be Lavender, which has a fresh, relaxing aroma – and the flowers are great for bees too.

These shrubs hails from the Mediterranean, so they love a position in well-drained soil in full sun – and dwarf varieties can be used to form a fragrant edge to a path.

Also in our top five are sweet peas, witch hazel and chocolate cosmos.

So now we’ve got you thinking, why not pop in to see us to choose the plants that will make your garden at ‘sense-ation’!