Although the Fragrant Garden is arranged to suit vision-impaired visitors, everyone can enjoy the scented flowers at the Ethel Dupar Gardens at the Lighthouse for the Blind, 2501 South Plum Street, Seattle, Washington (map).

Tours are scheduled from 11 a.m. until noon August 25, 2012, and again from 11 a.m. until noon September 8, 2012.

The garden focuses on plants that are intensely fragrant or wonderfully soft. Raised beds bring more than 50 varieties of plants close to your face to smell and touch; many are labeled in Braille. The 1/3-acre garden also is wheelchair accessible.

In the early 1970s, local businesswoman and philanthropist, Ethel Dupar, visited a fragrant garden in Aberdeen, Scotland, designed expressly for blind people. Inspired, she returned to Seattle to commission a fragrant garden that would engage the senses of
touch and smell in people with visual disabilities.

In July of 1973, the Seattle Lighthouse opened Ethel L. Dupar’s Fragrant Garden in space donated by the City of Seattle. Several decades after its initial opening, the garden became overgrown with weeds and bamboo.

As the garden’s thirtieth anniversary approached, the Lighthouse Employee Positive Action Committee initiated a renewal project. A team of volunteer gardeners, led by Master Gardener Helen Weber, began the process of restoring the garden by clearing weeds and planting fragrant flora throughout the garden. In 2003, the Seattle Lighthouse celebrated both the thirty-year anniversary and the grand reopening of Ethel L. Dupar’s Fragrant Garden.

Herbs, flowers, and other plants found in the garden include:
• Agastaches – six species
• Artemisias – four species
• Costmary
• Curry Plant
• Lavender
• Salvias – four species
• Scented Geraniums – four varieties
• Mints – five varieties
• Thymes – four varieties
• Tarragon
• Monarda
• Scented Goldenrod
• Azara microphylla
• Clethra alnifolia
• Gardenias
• Hyacinths
• Lilies
• Mockoranges
• Viburnums

(Photo courtesy of Seattle Lighthouse)