What is the Denver Art Museum Sensory Garden
The Sensory Garden is an open space for visitors of all ages and abilities where nature can be experienced through the senses. Filled with plants that evoke different experiences, visitors are invited to touch, smell, and feel.
The Denver Art Museum Sensory Garden Field Guide
While experiencing the Sensory Garden, visitors will be greeted by a handy field guide which will help guide them through the different plants and sensorial interactions.
About the Cover
Flowers and plants have long since inspired artists to create using the motifs of life and death, and no other painting evokes the sorrow of death as vividly as the Guernica by Pablo Picasso. Inspired by this painting, we created a cover that exploited this juxtaposition of death and decay.
But not everything is darkness and death. Every spring we are greeted by the smells and colors that flowers bring. To emphasize this, three plants glow through the cover with vibrant colors. In addition, a handful of other plants adorn segments of darker colors with white strokes.
The cover is composed of different segments of light and dark, these segments are an abstraction of the Sensory Garden as seen from above. At its core, the Sensory Garden is an experience of the senses like touch. To recall this sense visually, the segments that form the top-down view of the garden are filled with textures. From rugged concrete to the smooth grooves in a woodblock print, these textures visually inspire to touch.
Legend and Wayfinding
A look inside
The Sensory Garden is now open to the public. Pay it a visit and grab a copy of the Field Guide while experiencing the almost fifty plants that brighten the Garden!
Credits:
Botanical Illustrations
Michael Campbell
Susan DiMarchi
Leslie Crosby
Laura Farnsworth
Marjorie Leggitt
Doug McCallum
Mary McCauley
Susan Rubin
