The main municipal park in Weston-Super-Mare, Grove Park, is the home of The Garden of Fragrance , created in 1958 by the local Round Table Club for the benefit of Blind and partially-sighted people living in, or visiting Weston-Super-Mare.
In 1995, our Weston-Super-Mare Soroptimist Club commissioned and designed the Ivy Leaf Gate at the entrance of the Garden and in 1996 the local Tangent Club commissioned the Four Seasons Obelisk in the garden.
Our Club planted Rose bushes in 2006 in memory of a benefactor member of the Club and in May 2012 we were contacted by the Clerk to Weston Town Council enquiring if we would become Volunteer Friends of the Garden, which we have become; because of our wish to help the local Blind and Partially-sighted community and because we enjoy a bit of gardening.
Primary school children of Walliscote Primary school created, also in that year, 4 imaginative Sensory Boards, now located in the garden, and the Park received it’s first ever Gold Award in the South West –in-Bloom Competition. That Autumn we repainted the Ivy Leaf Gate and have continued to up-grade the Garden, planting sweet-scented shrubs, herbs and plants. We now have a water supply, and the Park received a second Gold Award in the Weston-in-Bloom Competition in 2013.
Two Braille Plaques, for the Blind, are in the garden one of which has a translation which reads, “This Garden suggests the Architectures of touch and scent; the skin reaches as far as their horizon. What is this feeling of Panorama? Sit with a friend and share its land marks; find ways to mark them for others.”
Janet Jones
SI Weston-Super-Mare