The Senses

The Senses

      Everyone who creates a garden does so to achieve a certain look. Even if it's just a couple of azaleas by the steps of a townhouse, gardeners have something in mind and hope the plants grow into a hedge to be proud of.

      I seem to be slightly color blind so I'll never see the world exactly as others do. Building the palette of the landscape will match my view of the world. It always surprises me when someone walks through the yard and points out a flower they really like when it looks ordinary to me. I suspect that no one has perfect color vision and our preferences are dependent on what filters through to our brain.

      How about the other senses? We all like different foods, so we taste differently. Vegetable gardeners are trying to get better taste than they can get from the stores where “traveling well” and “storing for a long time” are more important than simple taste. Does a Kurume azalea flower taste better than a Southern Indian? Have you checked?

      For the last couple of years, rabbits have invaded my back lawn but left the ornamentals, including the herbaceous ones, alone. Why? I decided to do a taste test and found that the plantain the marauders were eating actually was better than the hosta and heuchera they weren't. Don't duplicate this test. The heucheras were really bitter. And the leaves need to be spit out after that enlightenment.

      Hearing? I once went on a nature walk along the north rim of the Grand Canyon and the Park Ranger asked us to be silent for a while, listening to the stillness. Then, beyond the serenity, to listen to the sound of the wind. And beyond the wind, to listen to it in different trees and bushes. They each had their own quality of sound: hissing, sighing and a lot of sounds we haven't created words for. Quite an experience which went beyond what I had done before. Surprising, in a satisfying way. Listen to the wind in your trees and bushes. Listen to the wind in the pines; it's different than through the oaks. Do the azaleas discuss the wind among themselves? With your eyes closed, focus on the aural effect of different parts of your garden. If your garden is simply the small front yard of a townhouse, local parks can give you that variety: Green Spring, Meadowlark, Brookside and the National Arboretum come to mind in the DC area.

      Touch? A branch snapping back and hitting me in the face is no fun. We'll skip that form of touch here. When I touch evergreen azaleas, they each are distinctive. Magnifica leaves are tacky. Hard to clean off my hands. Others, such as Delaware Valley White, have large, dull leaves, a little hairy and not sticky. The Kurume group show off small, waxy leaves. If you were dropped into your garden in an unknown place and put your hand on a plant, would you be able to make a good guess at which it is? OK, the thorny roses and hollies would announce themselves. But the others? I can't do that yet but I'd like to be able to sometime in the future. Beyond azaleas, run your hands over the bark of different varieties of oaks. The Red Oak group feels differently than the White Oak group. Maple trees? Red Maple trunks will not remind you of Snakebark Japanese Maples.

      Gardeners will look for scents in their ornamentals, unless the space is filled with evergreen azaleas which have almost no fragrance. Fragrance is a highlight of the deciduous azaleas. So many flowers have a distinctive odor that they are often bought for that alone. Consider a new experience: have you knelt in a patch of snow and mud, sniffing a tiny crocus? The fall crocuses have a slightly sweet smell and will be different than the spring versions. Remember to try that next March.

      I had a fantastic sense of smell when I was young. The world almost spoke to me in odors as much as hearing and touch. I remember walking down a crowded hallway in 8^th grade and knowing a lot of students and teachers by their “fragrance” as they passed. The lack of air conditioning back then made this easier. Nowadays, I guess you could know people by the smell of their brand of antiperspirant. Unfortunately, I had no real use for such a super-power (no one stuck an article of clothing against my nose, asking me to go running through the woods looking for a lost child) and that ability has now declined to the point where no one will make a comic book about my amazing gift. What it has done is to give me a different perspective on smells in the garden. Things that people like are usually overpowering and unpleasant, such as Paperwhites, Lilies and deciduous azaleas. The reverse is also true: evergreen azaleas are thought of as having no scent, but when I put my nose up to a flower (being careful not to get stung!) there is an odor and it is different than that of the neighboring variety. And the vegetation has an odor, even before a leaf is crushed and then sniffed. Our yards are full of scents.

      As noted with my ability to smell, our senses change over time. Some of us have worked so much with our hands that they are calloused and more insensitive to what we touch than the hands of others. Some of us can hear the high-pitched hiss of the wind in the trees or the top notes of some warblers. Others (often older, or into heavy metal) have lost the upper registers.

      The point of all the above? When we walk side-by-side into a garden, we aren't seeing, tasting hearing, touching or smelling the same world. I wonder what your world is like?