Manchester Student Creates Sensory Garden At High School

MANCHESTER, NJ — At Manchester Township High School, there's a new garden in the courtyard. It has the scents of roses and colorful chrysanthemums mixing with the crunch of gravel under your feet, and when the wind blows through the smooth beach grass and the wind chimes, the gentle sounds can be relaxing.

Bailey Farrell's garden isn't just any garden, however; it's a sensory garden, meant to be a resource for special education students who have sensory processing disorders, and a gathering place for the student body as a whole.

Farrell, a 2018 graduate of Manchester Township High School, created the garden as her project for her Gold Award in Girl Scouts. The Gold Award is the highest level in Girl Scouts, equivalent to the Eagle Scout award in Boy Scouts.

"I started planning this last December," said Farrell, a freshman nursing student at Stockton University who turns 18 on Sept. 14. She wanted to build a garden, and when Amanda McCollum, a special education teacher at the high school, heard about it, she approached Farrell about the sensory garden concept.

"From there it all came together perfectly," Farrell said.

Sensory processing disorder is a neurological disorder in which the sensory information that the individual perceives results in abnormal responses, according to the Star Institute, which treats the disorder.Sensory processing refers to the way the nervous system receives messages from the senses and turns them into responses. For those with Sensory Processing Disorder, sensory information goes into the brain but gets "mixed up" in their brain, the institute says.

Sights, smells and sounds that make up everyday life can be overwhelming, confusing or even upsetting for those with sensory processing disorder. It can affect multiple senses at once, and also can affect things such as a person's balance, according to the Star Institute. As many as one in 20 children are believed to have some form of the disorder, and it often is found in children on the autism spectrum, thought it is not exclusive to those with autism, according to the Star Institute.

Farrell said her desire help children with the disorder and special education students was twofold: she had a number of friends and family members who are on the autism spectrum. In addition, her younger sister was diagnosed with auditory and visual processing issues when her sister was an 8th-grader, Farrell said.

The diagnosis has made a difference, because her sister, now a junior at Manchester, is able to manage the challenges the processing disorders create and is doing well, Farrell said.

The Sensory Garden consists of five garden boxes, each focused on a different primary sense:

The "touch" box is filled with beach grass, primarily for the texture. Farrell said it also was chosen for the "wooshing" sound the grass makes when the wind blows.

The "smell" box has orange, red and pink roses, which give off the scent that roses are famous for. But she also picked three different colors to appeal to sight as well.

The "taste" box is filled with blueberry bushes, which will grow berries. They also wer chosen because blueberries are native to New Jersey.

The "sight" box is planted with white, yellow and red mums, because they grow big and colorful.

"The sound part was tricky," Farrell said. She ended up with gravel, because it makes the "crunch" sound beneath your shoes, along with concrete pavers and an owl wind chime, to jingle in the breeze.

The project leaves room in the courtyard for others to expand on her work in ways that serve all the students, she said, and the upkeep of the plants will be part of the AP Environmental classes.

Farrell submitted her final report on her project last week and is just waiting for final approval of it to receive her award.

Farrell's project is one of the final actions of her troop: Troop 601 of Manchester in the Jersey Shore Council of Girl Scouts has disbanded because Farrell and the other five young women who made up the troop have graduated from high school.

"We've known each other since fifth grade," Farrell said. "We've even traveled halfway around the world together." Halfway around the world? "We went to Australia and New Zealand," she said, a trip paid for with their Girl Scout cookie proceeds.

"We sold a lot of cookies," Farrell said with a laugh.

The garden was unveiled Aug. 29 at the high school.

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Photos by Stacie Ferrara, provided to the Manchester Township School District and published with permission