Serenity Now: Garden for the Senses in full bloom

Mechanical engineering student Adam French works on the Garden for the Senses.

Is there an escape from the ringing phones, rattling printers and other office noise at Wright State? Is there a haven from the pressures of teaching, studying and working?

There is.

It’s called the Clara E. Weisenborn Garden for the Senses. And it’s an oasis in a desert of stress.

The garden is a stone’s throw from Allyn Hall.

Water trickles and pools around a stone mermaid sculpture. A hummingbird hovers and darts among the flowers. A vine-covered pergola shoots tiny shafts of sunbeams to the ground.

“This can be that little bit of relaxation in the middle of a crazy, hectic day,” said Linda Ramey, Associate Director of Sustainability.

Ramey, mechanical engineering major Adam French and other volunteers have been adding plants and otherwise sprucing up the garden over the past six weeks. Adam is a VISTA Summer Associate working this summer on gardening projects including community gardens.

The garden’s displays read like a seed catalog.

There is sweet basil, mint, sage and rosemary. There are peonies, irises, hibiscus, day lilies, sedum, oak leaf hydrangeas, Shasta daisies, coneflowers, flowering crabapple trees, black-eyed Susans, hostas, mums, dahlias, yarrow, colombine and begonias. There is a burning bush, trumpeter vine, wisteria and a red twig dogwood.

The garden gets its name because it bombards different senses.

“You can see the flowers, feel the lamb’s ear, smell the mint, the sage, the basil, the rosemary, the lavender,” Ramey said.

The garden is a popular lunch spot for summer campers and an educational treasure trove for the young children at Mini U.

Ramey hopes students, faculty and staff will take greater advantage of the garden.

“I would just like it to be a restful, quiet place where folks can come and collect their thoughts during the day,” she said. “It’s a nice place to get into nature and is literally just a few steps out of the buildings.”