Designing a Fall Sensory Garden! Nature Hills Blog

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 to learn how to bring new layers to your garden!

Enliven The Scent, Sound & Sight of The Fall Landscape!
- Why Plant A Sensory Garden?
Sight For Sore Eyes
A Touch of Fall!
Sound - Treat for the Ears
- Fall Scent Garden
The Taste of Fall?
Steep Yourself In The Sight, Smell, Sound, Feel & Taste of The Season!

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 sound 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 as 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. Preparing your body for reduced sunlight levels and spending time outdoors helps reduce seasonal affective disorder and 'sundown' syndrome!

Create a place to relax among your Sensory Garden with a comfy chair, a 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 an 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 firepit with protection from the wind and a patio heater or two to keep you warm.
The bird-friendly sensory garden should have a comfy bench or chair a little way 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 moment’s 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 made 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!
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 species like Cardinal Candy® Viburnum and Blue Muffin® Arrowwood Viburnum have showy, bird-friendly berries.
Harry Lauder's Walking Stick and Corkscrew Willow bring contorted branch interest, while Weeping Trees sculpt the snow beautifully in winter.
Firethorn (Pyracantha) - fiery red berries for fall and winter.
Heavenly Bamboo (Nandina) - bright berries, but check safety for birds.
Coralberry and Snowberry bushes - bubbly pinkish or white berries persist for a long time!
Crabapple trees - fruits persist into winter while feeding birds.
Rugosa Rose - red or orange rosehips!
Bittersweet vines - yellow shells open to reveal red berries.

Choosing evergreen trees and broadleaf evergreen trees keeps greenery around longer throughout the fall and winter months while giving birds shelter year-round.

Plants That Provide Motion

fall plants that add motion to your fall garden

Waving plumes and blades of Ornamental Grasses
Weeping Willows and other Weeping Trees with cascading stems
Swaying stands of Bamboo
Rustling seeds of Golden Rain Tree or Redbud

The sway of evergreen boughs, wind spinners, and flags adds soothing movement.

Evergreen or Broadleaf Evergreen Plants

For warm climates, there are many evergreen and broadleaf evergreen shrubs for your landscape! For northern growers, try Conifers, Juniper, Abelia, Oregon Grape Holly, Euonymus, Boxwood, Rhododendrons, and Privet.

These plants keep year-round greenery for when others lose their leaves.

Perennials with semi to fully evergreen foliage include: Bergenia, Coral Bells, Lambs Ears, Ice Plants, Periwinkle, Sedge Grass, Ajuga, Carpet Phlox, Artemisia, Foamflower, Barrenwort, Autumn Fern, and Dianthus.

An Ornamental Grass Patchwork Garden

Create a tapestry of textures with tall grasses in the back, mid-size fluffy grasses in the middle, and low grasses up front. Enjoy waving wands, upright textures, silky tassels, spikey blades, and fall color!

A Touch of Fall!

For tactile gardeners, texture-rich plants are irresistible!

Try including these in your borders:

Ferny Textures - Yarrow, Ferns, Lavender, Astilbe, Artemisia, Cranesbill Geranium
Flowing Textures - Prairie Dropseed, Forest Grass, Creeping Jenny, Hakone Grass
Spikey Textures - Sea Holly, Coneflower seedheads, Hens-n-Chicks, Blue Fescue
Coarse Textures - Coral Bells, Bergenia, Leopard Plant, Yucca
Fine Textures - Creeping Thyme, Sedum, Carpet Phlox
Fluffy Textures - Fountain Grass, Muhly Grass, Astilbe seedheads, Moss
Silky & Soft - Artemisia, Mullein, Dusty Miller, Lambs Ears
Waxy & Leathery - Ajuga, Sedum, Red Hot Poker, Gardenia, Southern Magnolia

Sound - Treat For The Ears

shop plants for your fall sensory garden

Plants can add natural music to your garden!

Nandina bushes - foliage rustles like fabric
New Zealand Flax - sound quality and evergreen appeal
Rattlesnake Master - seedheads shake like rattles
Bamboo - adds soothing white noise
Ornamental Grasses - rustle and rattle in the breeze
Nigella - seedpods like baby rattles
False Indigo Bush - seedpods act as maracas

Add bird feeders, baths, windchimes, spinners, and fountains for even more sensory sound layers.

Fall Scent Garden

shop plants to fill your autumn garden with sensory delight

Fragrance lingers even in fall! Witchhazel blooms smell great, while crushed foliage from Mints, Thyme, Rosemary, Lavender, Artemisia, Russian Sage, Bayberry, and Pines releases soothing aromas. Evergreens like Spruce, Fir, and Hemlock bring a fresh resinous scent.

Many plants, even when dried up in the fall, still have fragrant leaves when crushed or when you 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 brings 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 a 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, it adds scent to your garden for most of the year!
Northern Bayberry (Myrica) has wonderfully scented semi-evergreen foliage, plus it has colorful berries that have been used to make candles in days gone by!
Evergreens - 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?

fill the garden with fall flavors - fall sensory garden

Beyond pumpkin spice and apple cider, your garden can still feed you!

Enjoy late-season Apples and Pears, Plums, Persimmons, Pomegranates, Citrus, Nuts, Aronia, Quince, Gooseberry, Passionfruit, Cranberries, Blueberries, Groundcherries, and even Figs.

Cold frames and cloches extend harvests of Lettuce, Kale, Cabbage, and Radishes. Root crops like Carrots, Beets, and Potatoes can be mulched and left in the ground longer.