The sensory gardens (also called ‘gardens of senses’) are located in Muszyna’s Zapopradzie health resort district. Entrance free of charge, 24/7, all year round. Inside information boards in Polish, English and Czech, as well as text written with the Braille alphabet.
The idea behind a sensory garden is to select plants, landscape and architectural elements in such a way as to enhance the visitor’s perception of nature with all his senses, not just with the sight. Thanks to that, disabled persons have an opportunity to perceive nature more intensely and diversely than in regular gardens. Non-disabled persons, on the other hand, have a chance to not only enjoy their leisure and have some rest, but also to better understand how disabled persons perceive their world. You can do that simply by closing your eyes and concentrating on sounds, smells, and touch. In this way sensory gardens are beneficial for the integration of the handicapped. The garden may be used for therapy, socialisation and education of blind persons as well as those with psychophysical disorders or with intellectual disability. The use of gardens for therapy has its own, scientifically sounding name: hortitherapy. Everyone can have some rest and relax thanks to contact with nature and other, friendly people, in this unusual place. There are wide paths which are comfortable to use for mothers with strollers and persons on wheelchairs. The gardens are a perfect place of education and fun for children.
The sensory gardens of Muszyna are a beautiful park with numerous cycling and walking paths, a cascading stream, stylish lanterns, etc. You will find there a few thematic zones dedicated to health, smell, sound, taste, and taste and touch combined. You can enter the health garden through a rose alley from Mściwujewskiego Street. There are many exercise machines where you do not need to put in much effort, so that also aged persons may keep fit as they are admiring the garden. You can find here such plants as roses, thujas, spruce, maple and hornbeam. In the smell garden there are plants with intensive smells, so that the garden becomes a herbarium which you can read with your nose. Apart from strong-scenting trees and flowers (hyacinths, lilies, spruces and firs) you will meet spices known from your kitchen: thyme, mint, sage and garlic. We advise you to close your eyes and rub some leaves in your fingers so that you get a stronger scent of essential oils. Try to guess which scent means which plant (this is great fun especially for children!). In the sound garden all materials were selected in view of the sounds they produce. Here you can concentrate on the crunch of gravel under your feet or people stamping across a wooden bridge, the murmur of water in the stream, or the singing of birds. We should remember than the blind get their bearings in space mainly with sound and touch, so that here we can try to understand better how they perceive the world. Further on you can enter the garden of smell and touch. It is easy to guess that it is those two senses which were highlighted. Plants were selected in such a way that their flowers and leaves not only smell nicely, but also are diverse to the touch. Finally, there is the taste garden. If you are lucky and get there at the right time, you can have a chance to taste cherries, raspberries, chokeberries or apples. If you come more often, you have the chance to see the vegetation cycle of plants you mainly see in your plate.
At the highest spot in the park there is a tower with a viewing platform (a lot of stairs, but you can get some rest on the way). You can get there a splendid view of Muszyna and the Beskid Sądecki mountains, and in good weather even get a glimpse of the Slovak Tatras.
It is interesting to know that newlyweds have a chance to plant their own love tree which (hopefully) will grow in time with their marriage. You can also plant trees if you celebrate your round marriage anniversary (10th, 20th, etc.).
