Firstly, I must apologise for being a bit negligent at keeping readers up to date with developments in the SEN schools project. Over the next couple of weeks I hope to write a few blogs to bring you up to date with what has been happening with the project. This first one focuses on St Anthony's School, Chichester where we are developing a Sensory style garden.

In reality all gardens are ‘sensory', stimulating all five senses in many different ways. When I have visited ‘sensory gardens' in the past, I have often felt that the sense of taste has been overlooked; with gardens instead focussing on touch (soft leaves, textures such as bark, grasses), smell (scented plants), sight (colours) and hearing (bamboos, grasses).

Being a keen edibles grower (I have an allotment and previously worked on the Open Futures GrowIt project for the RHS), I wanted to make sure I rectified the balance in our selection of plants at St Anthonys.

When working with the Year 8 pupils at St Anthony's, I have focussed each session on one or two senses.  Back in the Autumn term, we used our sense of smell when planting garlic and onions in one of the raised beds, "delicious, I love garlic bread" said one of the pupils. These plants are already growing well and we will harvest the crop in early July so that we can enjoy a feast of garlic bread and other recipes just before we finish for the summer holidays.

Despite snow storms and ground that has been frozen solid, there have been a few nice days this winter to get on with jobs such as fruit planting. The fruit we planted was purchased from Blackmoor Nursery in Hampshire and most of it was bare root, and some strawberry plants were provided by my colleagues in the Fruit Department at RHS Wisley.

On a sunny day in February, we started off with planting climbing kiwi fruit and grapes along a south facing trellis and planted strawberries and raspberries in a lower bed in one of the garden areas. I started each session with an identification game, taking along fruit I had bought from a supermarket and getting the pupils to match them to the four different plants. It was a great way to get the children talking about how the plants would grow, how they were dormant in the winter and when we could expect fruit to eat. The pupils were able to use their sense of taste the following day as I left them the props to eat. Using real fruit props is much more tactile and tasty(!), but if you do not have a budget for this you can always use pictures instead.

My next visit was on a very cold day in early March, the sun kept trying to get out but there was an icy wind all day.  Two different areas were the focus for this day. For the morning groups, the sense of sight was called into action by adding colour to a dull semi-shaded border.

The first group were given the opportunity to use secateurs and take hardwood cuttings from the colourful stems of dogwood (Cornus). I am very keen to give capable pupils the opportunity to use as many tools as possible throughout this project. Whilst there are risks with using secateurs by ensuring there was one adult closely supervising their use and the pupils wearing gloves and concentrating on the job. We did this activity with 4 pupils, a teacher and myself. I would not do such an activity with a larger group of pupils as there would too many distractions.

We used a spade to create a slit and put two pieces of cutting material at each end, burying the two thirds of the dogwood in the soil. Hardwood cuttings do take at least a year to establish but if they all grow the school will be able to plant others elsewhere in their grounds or pot them onto sell at the school fair.

The other group planted lots of spring flowering primulas and it was good to see some of the crocus we had planted in the Autumn term coming through.

Pupil with Sage Plant

In the afternoon, the senses of touch and smell were used as the groups planted a wide range of different herbs along the bed by the trellis. The pupils loved touching and smelling the leaves and trying to guess what they were "smells like chewing gum" was a popular answer for mint, "roast dinners" for sage and rosemary, "curry" for the curry plant.

I will be back at the school again next week, when the sense of taste will be put to work once more with the springtime planting of lots of vegetables.

If you want to create a sensory garden in your school, click here for a useful resource sheet on our Campaign for School Gardening Website.