The 5 senses of gardening SIGHT

Arit Anderson explores how our senses affect the way we interact with our gardens. Here she explores the role sight plays in decision-making using colour and design

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Our world is communicated to us through five key senses, and it's these senses that are our navigators, allowing us to have a multiplicity of experiences. Whether it's guiding us away from danger or enrapturing us in the beauty and richness of our surroundings, we rely on our sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste to tell us what is happening. Over the coming months I will explore what each of these senses mean, and how we can, and do, use them to engage with our gardens.

When we pull back the curtains each day or enter our gardens, we are normally looking for visual clues to what is happening: scouting for new buds and flowers or checking what pest or disease may have arrived. How your garden looks is one thing, but have you stopped to think how it sounds, how it smells, how it feels and how it tastes? Taking all the senses through a garden is what gives it its magic.

It is estimated we perceive up to 80 per cent of all our information and what we learn through sight alone. I find the science of 'seeing' fascinating. The human eye is deemed to be the second-most complex organ after the brain, with over two million working parts! But how does what we see relate to how we enjoy our gardens?

Focus on design

Firstly, the complexity of sight means that no person sees the same; secondly, what we enjoy in a space is completely subjective. However, in garden design there are principles that are deemed the bedrock of what makes a ‘good’ garden, and most of these rely on sight. These include unity to ensure all the elements complement each other, balance and scale so the garden feels in proportion, and rhythm, creating repetition and movement to draw the eye. These elements can create a fabulous experience if they all work together.