Designing a Fall Sensory Garden

Fall Scent Garden

While nothing is blooming at this time with the exception of Witchhazel (which smells great!) there are still many aromatic plants you can include. The end of the growing season isn’t the end of its enjoyment! There is so much more to see than just greenery and plenty yet to smell, hear, and touch!

Creating a Sensory Garden will benefit you all year round, but this style of garden is especially beneficial during the lean fall and winter months!

Read on how to bring new layers to your garden!

Enliven The Scent, Sound & Sight of The Fall Landscape!

Sitting out on your porch or in your favorite lounge chair this fall, lap blanket at the ready, with your feet propped up on the edge of your firepit and with a hot mug of your favorite beverage. Now imagine seeing the pops of colorful fruit in your hedges, the rustle of dried leaves, the rattle of seed pods, the scent of fresh pine, and the song of birds flitting through the brush looking for food.

That is the sounds of the fall garden if you include plants with sensory features in your design!

Why Plant A Sensory Garden?

Finding every way possible to connect to nature on as many levels you can helps you feel more relaxed and in tune with the seasons. Spending time in nature reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, and this time of year it is especially important to get outside and adjust to the diminishing light and preparing your body for reduces sunlight levels, and time outdoors helps reduce seasonal affective disorder and ‘sundown’ syndrome!

• Create a place to relax among your Sensory Garden with a comfy chair, lap blanket and watch the sun rise or set whenever you can to realign your internal clock and regulate your cortisol and serotonin production.

• Create a nook surrounded by taller evergreen shrubs and put down a waterproof floor where you can meditate. Include a table for journaling, a place for an outdoor fountain or incense bowl, and a outdoor friendly space heater when the weather is a bit too cool.

• Outdoor hangout spots like outdoor dining areas, a bistro table for your morning cuppa, or a seating area around a fire pit with protection from the wind and a patio heater or two to keep your warm.

• The Bird friendly sensory garden should have a comfy bench or chair a little ways away from where the birds frequent to keep them feeling safe. Add a pair of binoculars and keep your birdfeeders full and clean! Remember to journal what birds you see and research ways to bring in more species to your landscape.

Your new backyard Sensory Garden doesn’t have to be anything fancy either! Just a place for you to stroll through after a long day at work or to get a moments peace with your cup of coffee in the morning is all the slice of paradise you need!

Sight For Sore Eyes

Plants with showy fall fruit and berries, fall and winter color, plus unique branching structure play a large role in visual interest in the late season Sensory Garden! Don’t forget to add garden flags, garden stakes, and statuary that are of materials that can withstand the elements.

• Holly bushes - many have evergreen textured foliage but all female Holly and Winterberry Holly (with a male pollinator Holly nearby) will have brilliantly showy fall fruit! Reds and oranges, the branches look great on the shrub, are eaten by birds, and can be snipped for indoor and outdoor décor!
• Beautyberry bushes - bright purple berries clustered along the stem show off until winter or until the birds carry them away!
• Bearberry Cotoneaster - showy red fall berries for birds
• Viburnum dilatatum and V. dentatum varieties have showy, bird-friendly red to black berries in the fall and winter months. Varieties like Cardinal Candy® Viburnum and 
• Blue Muffin® Arrowwood Viburnum are fan favorites
• Harry Lauder's Walking Stick and Corkscrew Willow bring contorted branch interest, while Weeping Trees sculpt the snow in the winter beautifully!
• Firethorn (Pyracanth) fiery red berries for fall and winter
• Heavenly Bamboo (Nandina) can have bright berries but be sure to know if it is safe for birds and your environment
• Coralberry and Snowberry bushes - bubbly pinkish or white berries persist for a long time!
• Crabapple trees often have showy fruit in the fall and it persists until winter while feeding birds! Try red-fruited Red Jewel Crabapple, yellow fruited Louisa Crabapple, or Prairifire® for orange-yellow fruit!
• Rugosa Rose have red or orange rosehips!
• Bittersweet vines have opened their yellow shells to reveal the red berries inside

In addition, choosing evergreen trees and broadleaf evergreen trees keep the greenery around longer throughout the fall and winter months! Plus they give birds a place to shelter in year-round.

Plants That Provide Motion

Here’s the plants that add more motion to your garden.

• Waving plumes and blades of Ornamental Grasses
• Weeping Willows and other Weeping Trees as their long cascading stems sweep the ground in the slightest breeze.
• Swaying stands of Bamboo
• Rustling seeds of Golden Rain Tree or Redbud

The sway of the heavy boughs of evergreens, wind spinners, and flags.

Evergreen or Broadleaf Evergreen Plants

If you are in a warm climate, then there’s loads of evergreen and broadleaf evergreen shrubs for your landscape! Many of which are beginning to bloom this time of year!

For northern growers, some great evergreen and broadleaf evergreen options include Conifer trees, Juniper bushes, Abelia Oregon Grape Holly, Wintercreeper Euonymus, Bearberry/Kinnikinnick, Boxwood, Rhododendrons, and Privet.

These plants give you year round greenery for something to look at when other plants have dropped their leaves. 

Perennials With Semi to Fully Evergreen Foliage:

• Bergenia
• Coral Bells
• Lambs Ears
• Ice Plants
• Periwinkle/Vinca
• Sedge Grass
• Ajuga/Bugleweed
• Carpet Phlox
• Artemesia
• Foamflower
• Barrenwort
• Brilliance Autumn Fern
• Dianthus

An Ornamental Grass Patchwork Garden

Want an entire garden of textures that look great spring, summer, fall and winter, plus is water-wise and low-maintenance? Try making an Ornamental Grass Patchwork garden! Plant tall grasses in the back, mid size and fluffy grasses in the middle with low grasses on the edges or in the front for a patchwork of waving wands, stiff upright textures, flowing textures, spikey to weeping seedheads, silky tassels, and rattling stiff and scratchy blades! Many Grasses have fall color too!

• Tall Pampas Grass - for towering fluffy fat seed heads or Switch Grass for a tall yet mist like garden texture.
• Large Fire Dragon Maiden Grass for bold red fall color and arching stems with silky tassels
• Mid-sized Golden Sunset™ Yellow Prairie Grass, Indian Grass, or Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grass for vertical texture
• Mid-sized Huron Sunrise Maiden Grass for pink silky plumes that turn into fluffy tan seedheads
• Gold Bar Maiden Grass mid-sized grass with horizontally variegated foliage
• Blackhawks Big Bluestem or Twilight Zone Little Bluestem Grass for colorful mid-sized clumps with upright flowering stems
• Prairie Winds Blue Paradise Little Bluestem spikey smaller balls of silvery-blue turn fire red/purple in the fall, or smaller Hush Puppy™ Fountain Grass or Dwarf Fountain Grass smaller spikey round balls of green with fluffy seed heads
• Lightning Strike® Feather Reed Grass variegated soft and flowing foliage mounds
• Bottlebrush Sedge Grass - spikey bottlebrush like seed heads
• Blonde Ambition Blue Grama Grass unique grass with seed heads like eyebrows!
• Variegated Feather Reed Grass vertical foliage and mist like plumes of airy seedheads
• Sideoats Grama for unique flowering stems that dangle all on one side of the stem
• Northern Sea Oats - flowing weeping seed heads with flattened showy seeds that wave in the wind.

You will enjoy a myriad of colors, textures, sizes, shapes, and variety with a mixture of these incredible grasses! Plus food for birds, seedheads for fresh and dried floral design and crafts, and white noise and motion for the fall and winter months! Many of these grasses stand tall all winter until you cut them back in the spring!

A Touch of Fall!

Many of the above plants have a touch component to their many other perks, making them fantastic for those who love to touch everything, run their hands over everything, and are tactile when interacting with their world!

Try including these unique textures in your garden borders:

Ferny Textures - Yarrow, Ferns, Tansy, Sensational!® Lavender, Astilbe, James Kelway Painted Daisy, Artemisia, Creeping Rosemary Plant, and Cranesbill Gernaium

Flowing Textures - Dwarf Prairie Dropseed, Forest Grass, Creeping Jenny, Frosted Curls New Zealand Sedge Grass, Golden Variegated Hakone Grass, and Northern Sea Oats

Spikey Textures - Blue Glitter Sea Holly seedheads, Coneflower seedheads, Hens-n-Chicks, Dianthus, Phormium, Dwarf Poker foliage, and Blue Fescue Grass

Coarse Textures - Coral Bells, Ajuga, Pigsqueak (bergenia), Leopard Plant, Corkscrew Rush Spiralis, and Yucca

Fine Textures - Creeping Thyme, Firecracker Sedum, Carpet Phlox, and White Cranesbill

Fluffy Textures - Redhead Fountain Grass, Muhly Grass, Astilbe seedheads, Sedum Sdedheads, Moss, and the puffball seedheads of Gaillardia/Blanket Flower

Silky & Touchably Soft - Artemesia, Verbascum/Mullein, Licorice Plant, Dusty Miller, and Lambs Ears

Waxy & Leathery - Ajuga, Pigsqueak, Sedum, Dianthus, Red Hot Poker Plants, Japanese Holly Fern, Gardenia in warmer zones, Southern Magnolia have waxy tops and fuzzy undersides, 

Sound - Treat for the Ears

Besides the obvious delight of walking through the crunchy fall leaves, there are many plants that have auditory stimulating features!

• Nandina bushes have foliage that sound like the rustling of fabric in the fall and winter breeze
• New Zealand Flax (Phormium) in warm growing zones is a great evergreen grassy element with a great sound quality to its foliage. When used as an annual accent in Northern climate container gardens, the dried foliage stands tall and colorful through winter too!
• Rattlesnake Master seedheads makes a sound like a rattlesnake when shaken
• Bamboo adds a fantastic white noise to the garden as the breeze blows

• Ornamental Grasses - the dried blades rustle and rattle in the breeze while the flowering stems wave and create motion. Our favorites are Northern Sea Oats and Big Bluestem!

• Nigella (Love-in-a-Mist) have baby rattle like seedpods
• False Indigo Bushes (Baptisia) the seed pods act as natural maracas
• Bamboo - rustling sounds
• Bird Feeders and bird baths that won’t freeze and plants that have seeds and fruit that brings birdsong to your garden is a must-have sound component to your Sensory Garden!

The rustling and rattling of dried plants and seed pods bring sound and white noise to your landscape. Include some windchimes and wind whistles (sound sculptures) that further let the breeze add music to your landscape. Pinwheels and garden spinners add to the symphony! Water features or fountains can be kept running in climates where the ground won’t freeze, but if you are in a cold growing zone, it’s time to winterize these items and others.

Many plants, even when dried up in the fall, still have fragrant leaves when crushed or walking on for you to stroll through!

• Mints - spreading members of the Mint family are tenacious and many keep their foliage on the dried stems well into the winter months, some even remaining semi-evergreen until a hard frost. Walking on, brushing past, or crushing these leaves bring a pleasant, soothing fragrance that lifts the spirits. Some Catmints (Nepeta) shrug off most early frosts and stay green until a long hard frost or heavy snow!
• Creeping Thyme - groundcover Thymes can be grown between foot path pavers and emit a wonderful strong smell when crushed or brushed past!
• In warm climates - Lemon Verbena, Rosemary and Lavender can be evergreen shrubs and bring lush scent to your world in the fall.
• Artemisia - often semi-evergreen in mild winters, the aromatic foliage is accented by its silvery finely-textured appearance!
• Bluebeard shrubs - not only are these beauties flowering in the fall for a late season visual delight, but the foliage is aromatic and also semi-evergreen
• Russian Sage and Salvia - even when dried out and dead after a frost, the standing stems and foliage have a spicy medicinal aroma when crushed
• Garden Sage - the thick foliage remains semi-evergreen in many fall and winter climates and even when dried add scent to your garden for most of the year!
• Northern Bayberry (Myrica) have wonderfully scented semi-evergreen foliage, plus it has colorful berries that have been used to make candles in days gone by!
• Evergerens - trees like Pine, Spruce, Fir, Balsam, and Hemlock have resinous and pleasant fragrance just begging for you to reach out and give them a gentle squeeze!

The Taste of Fall?

Beyond Pumpkin spice, apple cider, and thanksgivings bounty, it’s hard to believe that there are some flavors of fall growing in the garden!

Late season fruit are ripe and waiting for you to pick them in the lean months of October and November! Late-season Apples and Pears, and a few late-season Plum that taste better after a few frosts, Kousa dogwood, Pomegranates and Persimmon are ripe, and in warm climates, its the beginning of Citrus season! Nut trees are dropping their bounty of Pecans, Walnuts, and more! If you are adventurous, try gathering Ginkgo nuts for a unique treat.

Aronia fruit is still clinging to the bush, and Quince, Gooseberry, Passionfruit, American Cranberry Bushes, Bayberry, some Raspberries fruit right until a hard frost. Cranberries, and late season Blueberries, Groundcherry, and Breba crop Figs.

Herbs can be placed under cloches and in cold frames with lettuce, kale and other greens, and radish. Cruseferous veggies like Cabbage, and Brussel Sprouts don’t mind a bit of chill. Winter squash and pumpkins can still be found on their vines.

While root veggies like carrots, parsnips, onions, beets, turnips, and your potatoes/sweet potatoes are able to be dug any time before a hard ground-freezing frost. If you aren’t ready to harvest these underground crops, laying thick straw or hay over their plots or adding a cold-frame over them will extend their time in the ground if you have no root cellar to move them into.

Steep Yourself In The Sight, Smell, Sound, Feel & Taste of The Season!

Reduce stress, calm or stimulate the senses, and improve your mental and physical well-being by making your garden appeal to more than curb appeal.

Welcome autumn by enveloping yourself in all the season has to offer! For gardeners still mourning the end of the growing season - it's the best way to let go!

Make your landscape something to enjoy every season of the year and make every season something to look forward to with the help of Nature Hills Nursery!

Happy Planting!