Sensory garden helps kids learn and shed their stress

A group of volunteers was hard at work on Sunday planting trees and plants in a sensory garden where students, many of them disabled, will play, learn and shed their stress.

Paths are in place on the lot at the Sewall Child Development Center and REACH Charter Elementary School campus, and when completed, the garden will have a small meadow at its center — space where children can experience quiet, as well as an area where they can build forts, dig and play.

The children will learn about plants in a natural environment that will be safe for those in wheelchairs or using walkers or other mobility aids.

One-half of the 220 students, all between 2- and 5years-old, at Sewall have physical and neurological impairments, including autism, visual, or hearing disabilities, behavioral challenges and other problems. Others do not, said Heidi Heissenbuttel, CEO of Sewall, a nonprofit earlyeducation center.

Another 150 children attend REACH, a charter school in the Denver Public Schools system, and an independent not-for-profit corporation, that serves children from pre-kindergarten through fourth grade. Students at the school include both those with and without disabilities.

Chad Granda, a volunteer who was digging into a strip of dirt near the edge of the garden, said he has a 4-yearold boy who attends Sewall and is not disabled. “This is a good way for him to be exposed” to those with disabilities, he said. “I wanted to come out and help.”

The garden was designed by Catharine McCord, an adult program coordinator with the Denver Botanic Gardens and graduate of the University of Colorado Denver’s landscape architecture program.

McCord “approached us during her Masters Thesis project in 2016,” Heissenbuttel said. “Our team was honored to have her talent, and we collaborated to earn a $75,000 grant from the Colorado Garden Foundation to build this 0.3-acre resource.”

The Denver Botanic Garden contributed $3,000 worth of plants, and the Denver Digs Trees program donated trees for the project, near Congress Park.

When the value of plants, trees and volunteer labor — including that from the Independence House, an addiction treatment provider for the Colorado Department of Corrections in Congress Park, and Lifescape Colorado, a landscape contracting company — the price tag for the garden is about $150,000.