Explore the Garden
• Aquatic Garden
• Bonsai Collection
• Bulb Garden
• Children's Growing
Garden
• Circle Garden
• The Crescent
• Dwarf Conifer Garden
• Enabling Garden
• English Oak Meadow
• English Walled Garden
• Esplanade
• Evening Island
• Fruit & Vegetable
Garden
• Gardens of the
Great Basin
• Greenhouses
• Heritage Garden
• Kleinman Family Cove
• Lakeside Gardens
• Landscape Gardens
• Japanese Garden
• McDonald Woods
• Native Plant Garden
• Plant Conservation
Science Center
• Plant Evaluation
Gardens
• Prairie
• Railroad Garden
• Rose Garden
• Sensory Garden
• Skokie River
• Spider Island
• The Trellis Bridge
• Water Gardens
• Waterfall Garden
Explore the Garden
• Sensory beds
• Water walk
• Woodland walk
• Hilltop garden
The Sensory Garden is featured in our Best of Summer video.
Sensory Garden
take a tour
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The Sensory Garden is a feast for the senses, inviting visitors to experience its beauty through feel, smell, sound, and sight. The landscape celebrates the wonderful world of plants — their fragrances, sounds, colors, textures, and movement.
In the entry garden, the focal point is a large sycamore tree in the center bed. Around it are many bulbs, annuals, and perennials chosen for both their fragrance and their harmonious echoes of color. The leaves, bark, and flowers found here offer unique textures. Throughout the garden, sounds include water, wind, birds, insects, rustling grasses, leaves, and branches.
Visitors who choose the upper walk will stroll next to raised beds, which bring the plants, in all their glory, as close as possible. The lower woodland path takes you on a cooling walk through birch trees, wildflowers, and other companion plants partial to shaded conditions. Don't miss the crabapple meadow in spring, when half a dozen varieties of crabapple trees burst into pink and white bloom.
