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Seattle Sensory Garden

Seattle Sensory Garden, Seattle, WA, USA

Dawn to Dusk

$

playground

This space offers an inclusive play area using your senses to discovery sights, sounds, textures, colors and smells.  

Located in the heart of Seattle, near the Woodland Park Zoo, is the 1.3-acre Seattle Sensory Garden. Visitors often visit the Woodland Park Zoo with its bevy of animals to see and paths to wander, but there are lots of other fun places to play nearby for those who need a break from our busy downtown. The Seattle Sensory Garden is a new play space near the southern entrance to the zoo and is for all ages and abilities. This area is designed to experience nature through your senses by learning how people with different abilities experience the world around them. 

There's no traditional playground here - instead, kids can climb a brilliantly blue turf hill and slide down the other side. Follow the curvy hand rail around the corner to a musical paradise. Ring chimes, use mallets to pound on pipes, or flick switches to drum on tall logs. An oval-shaped metal table has cut-outs of animals you might see on your zoo visit and allows kids to trace their outlines for tactile stimulation. 

The talented gardeners can somehow coax roses in the adjacent garden to bloom all year, but they're at their most impressive and fragrant in the summer. See how many colors and scents you can spot before admiring your reflection in one of the ponds (or the puddles that collect during our extensive rainy season). 

Take a snack break in the gazebo and run through the wire tunnel covered in climbing roses before returning to your car or heading to the zoo or park. The Seattle Sensory Garden is such a beautiful space can be experienced year round for a different experience during each of the season. This is one place worth checking out while in the area. 

Features

ADA-Friendly Gazebo Gardens Pond Relaxation
Thoughtfully captured by:
Natasha Dillinger
Natasha was born and raised in California (Bay Area and San Diego areas) and caught the travel bug after studying French in high school. She studied abroad in France for a year (where her husband proposed) and earned an International Business degree at Northeastern University before working in accounting and finance for 8 years. Now based in Seattle, she paused her office job after her son was born to show her two young children around the Pacific Northwest and the world. When she's not plotting adventures in endless spreadsheets, Natasha enjoys reading and doing some freelance writing for local parenting publications.
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