Stopping to Smell and Share the Flowers

Barbara Anderson has found a special way to share the flowers with the visually impaired. When she guides tours of the fragrance garden at the Morton Arboretum, she encourages participants to use their senses of touch, sound, and smell.

“I’m a tactile person, so I believe that if you can feel the garden, you can envision it,” says Anderson, who began visiting the 1,700-acre arboretum soon after she moved to Lisle, Ill., 33 years ago.

When the arboretum instituted a volunteer docent program three years ago, Anderson jumped at the opportunity because she enjoys being outdoors and delights in sharing her passion with others. After completing a two-year certificate program, Anderson was ready to conduct weekend tours of the arboretum’s prairie paths and woodlands.

In the spring of 2001, Morton Arboretum docent program director Debbie Brooks approached Anderson about leading a group of visually impaired adults on a tour of the fragrance garden. Anderson immediately said yes.

“I like to try things I’ve never done before,” Anderson says. “I had no idea what their level of sightedness was. So I went to the garden two or three times. I sat on a bench with my eyes closed, and I listened. I listed the plants, and I thought about what I could use.”

The fragrance garden is a bucolic space framed by vine-draped trellises and pergolas. To convey the sense of entering a room to those who can’t see, Anderson suggests that the visually impaired wrap their arms around the 4-by-4-foot cedar posts of the garden’s entryway.

“I ask them to stand there for a few minutes, to feel the weight of the lattice work and wisteria vines overhead, to notice how the sunlight is temporarily blocked.”

Once inside, Anderson leads participants on a “crush and smell” tour. She encourages them to pull mint and lemon balm leaves from the bushes, to crush them between their fingers to feel their texture, and then to lift the leaves to their noses to take in each plant’s distinctive scent. She leads them to a dense barberry bush to manually examine the tiny oval leaves, the berries, and the long wooden thorns.

“I don’t know what ‘purple’ or ‘red’ are,” says Patti Bambas, who was part of a visually impaired group that toured the garden. “I need to be able to smell the flowers, to touch the leaves, and to feel the different textures.”

“She (Anderson) did a wonderful job,” adds Bambas, who has been sightless since birth. “She encouraged us to smell the different flowers and leaves and let us touch the plants. That meant so much to us.”

Listening also is a crucial part of the tour as participants sit on the garden’s benches and listen for the sounds of insects and birds. “We even note the ‘white noise’ of the cars on the tollway and the airplanes overhead,” Anderson says.

Anderson finds that touching also is a good way to introduce pre-school children to the fragrance garden. She encourages youngsters to run their hands over the length of a Peking lilac tree, its smooth, silky wood intersected with patches of rough, peeling bark.

“Barbara enjoys researching new things and learning along the way,” Brooks says. “Her personality is warm and friendly. She just makes the tours a lot of fun.”

Anderson calls what she does “simply chatting with someone else who loves the outdoors.”

But for Patti Bambas and others, Anderson holds the key to the secrets of the garden.

Mary McNulty is a freelance writer in Chicago.

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