Sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are the five senses most of us are taught to design for. They dominate how landscapes are discussed, photographed, and evaluated.

But not all cultures understand perception this narrowly.

Some traditions recognize many more ways of sensing the world — including internal, emotional, and spatial perceptions that shape how we move, orient, remember, and feel. Whether the number is fourteen or thirty-three is less important than the idea itself: experience is not limited to what we see.

When we design landscapes only for the eye, we flatten them. When we design for the whole body — for time, rhythm, balance, tension, temperature, and movement — spaces become more immersive, memorable, and alive.

This isn’t about novelty or gimmicks. It’s about expanding our judgment as designers and garden makers, and becoming more intentional about how landscapes are actually experienced, not just viewed.

I’m going to skip the five senses we already know how to design for. Instead, I want to focus on the less obvious perceptual and sensation-based senses — the ones that quietly determine whether a place feels compelling, comfortable, unsettling, or forgettable.

The Perception Senses in Landscape Design

Time

In many cultures, time is understood not as a strict, linear sequence to be managed, but as a cyclical force tied to natural rhythms. Landscape design is uniquely suited to express this, because gardens are never static.

Time shows up in seasonal change, in growth and decay, in light shifting across a space throughout the day and year. A garden that feels alive often does so because it allows these changes to be visible rather than concealed.

Designing with time in mind means choosing plants and layouts that evolve gracefully — not just peak once. It means letting dormancy, senescence, and transition play visible roles. Paths, views, and focal points can be arranged to highlight these cycles, inviting people to experience the passage of time through the landscape itself.

A simple planting of grasses and clipped trees, for example, can feel richly dynamic when seasonal texture, movement, and light are allowed to do the work.

Rhythm

Rhythm is closely tied to time, but it operates spatially as well. We experience rhythm through repetition, variation, and pacing — the way our eye and body move through a space.

In landscape design, rhythm can be created through repeating plant forms, recurring materials, or sequences of compression and release. A path that curves and loops around water or planting beds echoes the rhythm of rivers. A row of trees establishes a steady beat. A change in planting density can create a pause.

I often think of gardens as having both a melody and a backbeat. The melody is visual — where your eye travels. The backbeat is slower and deeper — bloom cycles, growth patterns, and seasonal shifts that subtly shape experience over time.

Design for the sense of Proprioception (Kinesthesia)

Proprioception is our sense of body position and movement — our ability to know where we are without looking.

In landscape design, this sense is activated through terrain, texture, and spatial sequencing. Varying path materials, subtle changes in grade, steps, edges, and transitions all inform the body as it moves.

Imagine navigating a garden with limited vision. You would still understand where you are based on how the ground feels, how space opens or narrows, how sound changes, how your body adjusts. Designing with proprioception in mind creates spaces that are physically engaging and grounding, pulling people into the present moment.

Gardens that acknowledge this sense tend to feel immersive rather than purely decorative.

Clairsentience (The perception of what is normally not perceptible)

Clairsentience — the perception of atmosphere, emotion, or energy — may sound abstract, but everyone has experienced it. Some spaces feel calm. Others feel charged, unsettled, or restorative, even when we can’t immediately explain why.

Landscape design can honor this by attending to relationships rather than objects. The placement of a tree, the stillness of water, the shelter of an enclosure, or the openness of a clearing all contribute to emotional tone.

Many design traditions — from feng shui to sacred groves — work with this sense intentionally. The goal isn’t mysticism, but coherence. When elements feel aligned, spaces tend to feel right.

A Sense of Balance 

Balance is more than symmetry. It’s the sense that a space is resolved — visually, physically, and emotionally.

We feel imbalance instinctively. A garden can be lush but oppressive, ordered but rigid, wild but chaotic. Balance emerges when contrasts are intentional and proportions feel considered.

This might mean pairing cultivated elements with naturalistic planting, or offsetting strong architectural lines with softer forms. Balance also relates to physical comfort — where paths feel stable, transitions feel safe, and challenges are deliberate rather than accidental.

The Sensation Senses: 

Designing for the sense of Pain 

The sensation of pain, whether physical or emotional, is an integral part of the human experience, reflecting life’s challenges and the growth that comes from overcoming them. You can acknowledge this by creating spaces that facilitate healing and reflection.

Healing gardens are specifically designed to provide a sanctuary where individuals can confront and process emotional pain in the calming presence of nature. Include winding paths that encourage contemplative walks, secluded benches for introspection, and water elements with soothing sounds. Use fragrant plants and flowers for an aromatherapy impact.

Similarly, you can engage the sense of pain through the use of spiky plants or rough materials, which can create boundaries or deter access to certain areas while also creating curiosity and encouraging careful engagement.

A sense of Tension in Garden design

Tension is understood as a dynamic between opposing forces or a state of mental or emotional strain. It is often a part of life that drives growth and change. This concept of tension is subtle when integrated into landscape design.

Juxtapose rough and smooth textures or create contrast between dense plantings and open spaces. Strategically place bright, vibrant flowers against subdued, dark green foliage.

These design elements create a visual and experiential tension that captures attention and provokes thought.

Additionally, you can deliberately create uneven pathways or sudden changes in elevation, which can physically manifest tension, causing you to pay more attention to your surroundings (and get your face out of your phone!).

Pressure

Pressure is a motivating force that shapes decisions and actions. This understanding is cleverly reflected in landscape design, where the physical layout and spatial organization are used to subtly influence the movement and feelings of individuals within the space.

Designed spaces can create a physical or psychological sense of enclosure or openness. Narrow pathways flanked by high, dense vegetation can evoke a sense of compression, subtly guiding visitors toward a certain direction or behavior in the garden.

Conversely, open areas such as wide courtyards or expansive lawns can relieve the sense of pressure, offering a feeling of release and freedom. I often think of doorways, gates, and other transitions as pinch points where you can heighten or release pressure in a design.

Details can subtly impact pressure, too. Consider how the bricks are oriented in a pathway. A running bond where bricks lay lengthwise with your walking stride will heighten the pressure to speed up your pace. A ninety-degree rotation, so the brick length is perpendicular to your stride, will subconsciously create pressure to slow you down.

A Sense of Itch

The sensation of an itch symbolizes a desire for change or the need to address something that is persistently nagging or uncomfortable. Incorporate this into your landscape design with elements that provoke curiosity and encourage exploration, effectively “scratching” the itch for discovery and new experiences.

A designer might use intrigue and mystery (give a furtive glimpse of something) in a garden’s layout to encourage you to venture into less visible or accessible areas. A winding path that disappears behind shrubbery or around a bend sparks interest and the metaphorical itch to explore.

Textural contrasts in plantings, such as rough bark next to soft leaves or the use of color splashes in foliage and flowers, can also stimulate visual and tactile curiosity.

Thermoperception and the design sense of temperature

Hot and cold temperatures – or thermoception can be addressed by creating areas of sun and shade it by using materials that either absorb or reflect heat to modify microclimates within a garden. But it can also be a feeling that you perceive visually. Red feels hot, blue feels cool, and green tends to feel somewhere in the middle.

We instinctively crave gardens and landscapes that inspire all the senses, so why not consciously consider more of them when you are creating your landscape plan?

What kinds of gardens would you make if you actively tried to appeal to more than just the main five?  

Designing with Judgment

We instinctively crave landscapes that engage more than just our eyes — places that slow us down, orient us, challenge us, comfort us, or quietly hold our attention. When a garden feels deeply right, it’s rarely because of a single visual moment. It’s because multiple sensory cues are working together, often below conscious awareness.

Designing this way requires judgment. It asks us to move beyond surface aesthetics and consider how space unfolds over time, how bodies move through it, and how subtle tensions and releases shape experience.

If you approached your next landscape — large or small — with this expanded sensory lens, what decisions would change?
What would you emphasize, soften, or leave unresolved?

Good design doesn’t just look good.
It feels inevitable once you’re inside it.

Resources:

This post was inspired by Colm Joseph Design: Colm’s work is a great representation of how multisensory design makes a garden stand out. If you want to know more about Colm or hire him to work on your garden (he works on a wide selection of gardens but is based in Suffolk England) – you can learn more about him through his Instagram (colm_joseph) or website.

More posts about Designing your garden:

• Improve your Autumn Garden with Four Fall Focussed Garden Design Tips
• Garden Gallery: The Urban Physic Garden
• The advantages of adding a simple reflecting pool to your garden
• The Garden Tour: Three Different Gardens and Experiences
• Soiled & Seeded: Cultivating a Garden Culture