Braille Garden @museum.de

M 1: Gardens appeal to all the senses. The bright colours of the flowers aren’t all we perceive – there’s a great deal more: the gentle rustling of the leaves in the wind, the taste of the sweet apple from the tree, the roughness of the bark when we touch it. This part of the monastic garden is a reminder of the wide range of sensory stimuli. You’ll find more than 20 different common plants here.

Touch the plants, smell them, sample their flavour – aromatic tarragon, sorrel or the scent of the balsam herb Tanacetum balsamita, which is rich in essential oils.

This garden is especially designed for our blind and partially sighted visitors. There’s a long trug, shaped like two adjoining sides of a rectangle and with a horizontal panel along the top edge, which allows you to discover and get to know the medieval flora.

F 2: This garden is called the Braille Garden, named after the Frenchman Louis Braille, who invented the writing system of the same name. That’s because the individual plants here are also labelled in Braille, so that their names can be read by touch. The Braille alphabet is explained on the panel for sighted visitors. In the Braille Garden shelter is provided by a pavilion with a conical thatched roof made of wood and willow rods.