17 Ways to Create an Immersive Garden

With summer right around the corner, now’s the time to start thinking about ways to spruce up your outdoor space so you can enjoy it even more this year. For this season’s project, we suggest incorporating some of these DIY immersive garden ideas to transform your outdoor space completely and appeal to all of your senses. Are you ready for some garden therapy?

What Are the Benefits of Having an Immersive Garden?

By stimulating all five of the senses, you can create an immersive garden that leaves you feeling less stressed and more relaxed, just by sitting down and enjoying your own outdoor space.

How to Plan the Design of an Immersive Garden

The design of an immersive garden is paramount to creating the responses and benefits that are often the reason for creating one. 

Using the Five Senses to Create an Immersive Experience

Planning an immersive garden involves envisioning where one might use a particular sense, and then incorporating the proper element at that point. So in every step you take to transform your outdoor space into an immersive garden, consider the five senses: sight, touch, smell, taste, and sound. Then, select an element or feature that can highlight one of those senses naturally. 

For example, if you have a rooftop garden, when one is walking up steps, their hand naturally moves upward. That’s the perfect place to plant something that can elicit a response from the sense of touch. Or, just as someone steps into an immersive garden from inside, the first thing they’ll notice is a change in smell. It’s a natural olfactory response that’s directly tied to human survival instincts. In this case, you can make it a pleasant experience by having fragrant and aromatic plants directly nearby. 

17 Immersive Garden Ideas to Create a Complete Sensory Experience

Deciding what to put into an immersive garden can feel a tad overwhelming, considering there are so many options. Plus, as you transform your outdoor space, you may decide that you want to create the elements and features yourself. We’ve put together 17 immersive garden ideas to help you create a complete, sensory experience for anyone who steps into it. 

Smell

Our sense of smell is one of the strongest senses, considering it’s directly connected to our memories. Have you ever caught a whiff of a freshly baked dessert that takes you back to when you were a child and your mother used to make the very same one? That’s the power of our sense of smell. So, highlighting smell with these immersive garden ideas can create positive memories and experiences for you and your family. 

Make Your Immersive Garden Smell Amazing with Aromatic Plants

The first way to incorporate the sense of smell into your garden is by adding aromatic plants. You can add these throughout your entire garden to elicit a positive experience. However, we recommend highlighting areas where your nose will pick up on it almost immediately. 

That’s usually going from one location to another. For example, when you first step outside into your garden from inside your home. Your nose will pick up on new smells right away. So having aromatic plants, such as the highly-scented lavender, is the perfect option. 

Line Walkways or Steps with Roses

Walking from one location to another within your garden creates a natural draft. So, lining walkways with fragrant flowers is perfect! Try lining your walkways or even steps in your garden with roses. They’re a classic fragrant plant that will have you wanting to spend all day walking the pathways you’ve created. 

Smell the Surroundings on a Garden Bench

There’s nothing quite like sitting down among lush flowers, closing your eyes, and breathing deeply to take in the smell of a fresh garden. Somewhere in your space, add a garden bench so you can do just that. Around your bench, plant more of your favourite fragrant flowers, such as, honeysuckle, choisya sundance, and dianthus. You can also add in bulb flowers, such as hyacinths. This is a perfect option if you have a small outdoor space that you want to transform. Tuck your garden bench in a corner and then add your plants. This will keep the fragrance from wafting too far away from you to enjoy it. 

Taste

It may sound like the most difficult to introduce into your space, but these ideas prove otherwise. Accomplishing this sense does take a little bit more garden maintenance, but our guides on growing vegetables, fruits, and other tasteful plants make it much easier. 

Use Your Immersive Garden in the Kitchen with Vegetables

Incorporating taste sensory elements into your garden is all about including edible plants. And what’s better than growing vegetables to use in your kitchen. From learning to grow vegetables from seeds, like tomatoes, to growing potatoes, you can add in all of your favourites to your outdoor space. Growing vegetables in raised beds makes your garden feel a little more neat and organised. 

Plant Spices and Herbs in a Raised Container

This idea will stimulate both taste and smell. Choosing a window box or planter is a great way to plant and grow spices and herbs that you can then use in your cooking. Add in some Italian herbs like rosemary, parsley, and chives to get some great cooking additives.

Have Easy-to-Grab Snacks with Fruits

While the other two ideas focus on stimulating the taste sense in the kitchen (although it starts in your garden), this one can be the best of both worlds. Considering many fruits, like strawberries, require no preparation, you can incorporate them into the design of your immersive garden so that you can grab a snack as you enjoy your outdoor space. 

Sound

Sound is another one that’s often thought to be the most difficult to introduce to your space. However, it’s not impossible! You can use many different elements and features to bring this immersive sensory experience to life. 

Add Natural Music with Wind Chimes

Think of a breezy day in your outdoor space. You’re sitting on your garden bench, taking in the new smells of the fragrant flowers around you. In the distance, you hear the soft playing of wind chimes. Can you picture it? The natural music of wind chimes is an excellent way to add sound to your garden.

Invoke Calmness with Trickling Water Features

If the tinkling of wind chimes doesn’t quite do it for you, then perhaps the trickling of water will. Water features that bubble and babble are one of the most popular ways to incorporate sound into a garden. They naturally invoke calmness and bring a powerful sense of relaxation. Try incorporating water features by adding small fountains. You can even work some landscaping magic by incorporating a small pond. 

Select Plants to Invite Wildlife

Not only do some plants create their own sound, such as the rustling of miscanthus and bamboo, but you can also select plants that attract wildlife. Nothing will sound more soothing than the sounds of nature. Think of birds chirping, bees buzzing happily, and even small animals rustling through the plants. 

Touch

We don’t often think of touch when we think of a garden, but there are many ways to incorporate it into your immersive garden design. Try one of these ideas: 

Bring Texture with Bamboo

Bamboo is one of those plants that naturally brings a sense of calm and relaxation. So it’s a perfect choice for your immersive garden. It also helps that it has a natural, rigid texture to it to highlight the sense of touch. 

Use Tall, Flowering Plants 

Tall, flowering plants are perfect for touch because we can easily reach out to touch them. Ornamental grasses and flowering plants like stipa gigantea, festuca glauca, and heathers can create the effect you’re looking for. 

Try Plants with Softness

Plants with a natural softness are excellent ways to incorporate the sense of touch into your garden. One of the best plants to do this is Stachys byzantine, better known as lamb’s ear. It’s a fuzzy, soft green plant that you’ll find you want to gently touch every time you step into your garden. 

Create Textured Surfaces

Textured surfaces, that aren’t plants, are a great way to stimulate the sense of touch – even if you never touch it. It can still make your brain work a little harder because it understands that the texture is creating a difference in feel. Think of textured wood next to smooth paving. Or smooth paving on your patio with fluffy grasses planted in between the paving stones. 

Sight

It may be the easiest sense to stimulate in an immersive garden, but nonetheless, we have plenty of ideas to help you. 

Create Wonder with Colourful Plants

One of the most effective ways to create an immersive garden, especially for children, is to play with colour. Finding flowers, plants, and more that bring bright, vibrant colours is a great way to create wonder and excitement with your outdoor space. Think of plants for each season that bring some kind of colour, so that you’ll always have something to look at, instead of only looking forward to spring and summer. Staggering your colours by choosing flowering bulbs that bloom throughout the different stages of the year is a great way to do this. 

Choose Soothing Colour Palettes

Speaking of colour, you can truly create a specific mood and experience by choosing the right colour palettes. Wildflowers are known to bring those bright, vibrant colours that elicit excitement and energy. However, if you’re looking for something more relaxing and tranquil, then choose plants that create a soothing colour palette. The soft green of lamb’s ear combined with the pastel of lavender is a great example of this. 

Pull in Visual Interest by Surrounding Door Frames with Plants

If you’re looking to really make a statement with your immersive garden, then you’ll want to add some visual interest. Consider planting vining plants or climbing plants around your door frames. This can create a beautiful, powerful effect for anyone who sees it. 

Add Outdoor Dining and Seating to Create an Immersive Garden Experience

Finally, think about the design and layout of your immersive garden a little bit more. After all, what’s an immersive garden if you don’t incorporate a way to enjoy it? To really soak up both the sight of it along with all of the other senses, add outdoor dining or seating in a location that is centrally located to elements you’ve added for each sense. 

Creating an outdoor space that you love and want to spend your time in during the warmer months is one of the best home improvement projects you can take on. Use these immersive garden ideas to help you transform your space! 

When you’re ready to gather all of the necessary materials to incorporate these elements into your garden, be sure to shop our lawn and garden range here.