Stourhead seasonal trail

Trail launch press release 16 May 2006

First sensory trail for a garden launched by the National Trust at Stourhead

The National Trust at Stourhead, in conjunction with the Sensory Trust, has launched a new sensory trail of the garden. The comprehensive package of resources will help many more visitors with a range of disabilities enjoy the Wiltshire eighteenth-century landscape garden.

This is the first time the National Trust has developed such a facility for one of its gardens and is one of the first times a sensory trail has been created on this scale for any garden in the UK. The trail has been designed and developed working in conjunction with disabled people so the variety of methods of interpretation for the trail are designed to be as accessible to as many people as possible.

The trail has a number of different components for visitors with differing needs. A tactile map, a portable 3D mini model of the garden, will be of particular interest to blind or partially sighted visitors. There are also tactile labels in braille at the key features mentioned in the trail, such as the temples or grotto, as well as an audio descriptive guide of the trail.

Particularly distinctive on the trail is the use of widget symbols. These symbols have been developed to assist people with learning difficulties. They are located around the garden on the labels and link in with a new map leaflet to help explain the garden.

The Sensory Trail leads visitors around the lake at Stourhead and encourages visitors to use their senses to interpret the garden. In the Sensory Trail leaflet, for example, visitors are encouraged to feel the classical stone pillars in the Temple of Flora, smell the leafy fronds of a cedar and touch its bark, listen to the sounds of the natural spring in the Grotto or get up close to the rough trunk of the Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera).

The Sensory Trail has been developed in conjunction with the Sensory Trust, the Swindon Coalition for the Disabled and North Somerset People First and has been road tested by Mark Austen, a blind RNIB volunteer with expertise in the field.

Heather Smith, National Trust Head of Access for All, said: “We are delighted to be piloting this new project at Stourhead and are confident that it will add to the enjoyment of many of our visitors. The project has been devised to make Stourhead accessible to as many different people as possible. We hope that this project, which is unique in its scope for a garden, will make a real difference to visitors with a wide range of disabilities and can become a template for other National Trust gardens. We have plans to develop the range of interpretative methods even further and look forward to feedback from visitors to assist in this.”

Lynsey Robinson, Inclusive Designer for the Sensory Trust, said: "We are working with key organisations, such as the National Trust, to pioneer new approaches to inclusive site design, information design, education and service delivery. The project at Stourhead represents a major step in making this internationally famous garden more accessible to a wide range of people.”

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