Seeing with Other Senses: Gardens for the Blind

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Even the most disabled students can help water seedlings and transplant cuttings. These activities are a tremendous esteem boost to students who have spent a lifetime receiving care, letting them offer care and nurturing. The Perkins Spring Flower Show—with categories such as “Plants Grown from Seed” and “Fresh Flower Vase Arrangements”—highlights the students’ achievements for their families, friends and the local community and exemplifies the school’s slogan, “All we see is possibility.”

At the Western Blind Rehabilitation Center at the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital in Palo Alto, California, an herb garden project allows students to practice the independent living skills they are learning at the residential training program. They plant, tend, cultivate and harvest herbs that they use to flavor oils and vinegars, which they bottle, label and sell to raise funds for their recreation budget.

Jerry Duncan, the creative arts therapist assigned to the blind center, and Jane Phillips, project organizer, report that three alumni of the center have used their herb gardening experience to help others in their communities after leaving the center. One gardens with inner city children in Ohio; a second gardens with a mission project in South Africa; and a third generates income by selling homegrown herbs to area restaurants. As blind people who have used gardens to help themselves now use them to help others develop their potential, seeds of hope for the future continue to grow.

Jo Ann Gardner is a writer, gardener and cook living in the Adirondacks of New York.

Nation’s Best Gardens for the Blind

Gardens for the blind and visually impaired feature Braille signs, fragrant and textured plants, often water features, and are laid out for easy access.

Betty Ott Talking Garden for the Blind
Rockefeller Park Greenhouse
750 E. 88 St.
Cleveland, OH 44108
(216) 664-3103
www.RockefellerGreenhouse.org

Recorded messages at the entrance and at intervals along walkways guide visitors through the garden. At the bronze sculpture of Helen Keller kneeling at a water pump, visitors can operate the pump and feel water run over her hand.

Elizabethan Herb Garden at Mellon Park
Fifth Ave. at Shady Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15206
(412) 341-8014
lizarddep@verizon.net

Designed and maintained by the Western Pennsylvania Unit of The Herb Society of America (HSA), the garden was not designed for the blind, but garden chair Liz DePiero has installed large print and Braille signs throughout. The garden features culinary, fragrant, Shakespearean and Lewis & Clark beds. Liz hosts tours for the blind (and their guide dogs).

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