New Tools for Garden Visitors with Low Vision Created by Local Accessibility Advocate and Philly Poet

This article was featured in the April 2025 Bartram’s Garden collaboration with the Southwest Globe Times newspaper.

For Southwest Philadelphia neighbors, Bartram’s Garden is a place to experience nature in the city, whether it is for a picnic, birdwatching or some time by the river with your grandkids.  Now people who are blind or have low-vision have a new way to enjoy the Garden through recorded audio descriptions that provide a sensory, immersive experience as they walk through parts of the park. Click here to access the new audio descriptions.

Charmaine Parrish, a Bartram’s Garden neighbor and accessibility advocate who is legally blind, and Beth Feldman Brandt, an audio-describer and poet, worked together with the Bartram’s Garden staff on this project with support from the Sowing Excellence Awards of the IDEA Center for Public Gardens and the U.S. Botanic Garden.

 

Let’s listen in on their conversation.

 

What’s your connection to Bartram’s Garden? 

Charmaine Parrish (CP): Well . . .  my connection to Bartram’s is that my grandparents owned a home here in this community. I’ve spent a great bit of my childhood here and we would go to Bartram’s Garden in the warmer months. You know, my grandfather loved being in the outdoors so we always enjoyed walking around the Garden. And now I live not very far from the Garden.  How about you?

 

Beth Feldman Brandt (BFB): I’ve always loved Bartram’s and take all my out-of-town visitors here to this amazing history and beauty. I am a poet and I actually wrote a book of poetry about the Bartram family and the Garden.

 

So you and I met when you were one of the coaches for Philadelphia’s Audio Description Learning Network Fellowship Program for live theater and I was one of the fellows. When I received the Sowing Excellence Award to describe public gardens, I knew you lived nearby . . .

 

CP: Yes, you invited me on to the project and I was very happy to be a part of it. One, because of our experiences working together during the ADLN work with the theaters and two, just our mutual appreciation for the Garden.

 

BFB: One of the things that I learned really quickly was that describing live theater has real challenges because there’s live theater going on. You have to talk really precisely and quickly and not talk when the actors are talking.

 

But creating audio-descriptions for gardens is really different. Gardens don’t talk or move. But the challenge of describing a garden is how do you capture in words a full garden experience for people who have low vision or are blind?

 

So I guess we should start by explaining what audio-description is! 

CP: Until the pandemic hit I knew that there were people who described arts and cultural experiences. And usually I would associate that with recordings that were at museums. But I did not know that there were description services specifically created for people with visual impairments. So we settled into the pandemic when everyone was looking for things to do, I went to a theater event and it was the first time that I heard live theater being described by a live person attending the same show that I was attending. From the minute I found out about it I was deeply interested in how it worked.

 

Quite simply, audio description is describing something––in this case it was live theater but it could be museums, outdoor spaces, movies––where someone is detailing what’s happening visually. With audio description, a person who has limited vision or no vision could have a better chance of having a fuller experience or being able to experience an event right along with people who are sighted.  In theater, this is done by a live person describing in real time.  For Bartram’s Garden, we created recordings that people can listen to at any time when they walk through specific parts of the Garden.

 

BFB: So my first experience with audio description was actually going with a group of schools for kids who were blind or had low vision to the Philadelphia Flower Show with Nicole Sardella, who is an accomplished audio-describer in Philly. I really loved this combination of figuring out what was important for people to know and then finding just the right language using my skills as a poet.

 

What I have learned is that for gardens and outdoor spaces, you’re not just capturing, “There are three flowers on this stem.” You’re trying to recreate a more sensory experience. And that’s something that I really learned from you. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what kind of sensory experience an audio description should have because that was something we worked on so much together.

 

CP: You know, a lot of people may think that audio description is just giving people some extra information about an event or describing a piece of art or a certain tree or building. It’s more about creating an immersive experience that uses all of our senses because the person who is listening can’t use their visual senses.

 

Good audio description gives them that immersive experience where they truly feel a part of what’s going on and they leave feeling just as great as anyone else who’s attended that event. They don’t feel like they missed out on something.

 

People who are sighted may not even know that they’re experiencing all of their senses because it’s all happening at the same time and they are able to see it, take it in, and form their own story. So we help people who have limited vision form their own story.

 

Nothing about us without us.

BFB:  There is this expression in the accessibility community, “Nothing about us without us.”

 

I kind of understood it, but I learned through the Audio Description Learning Network that the core of audio describing is having a blind or low vision partner and coach to do this work with you because as you said, there are things that, as a sighted person, we don’t even notice are a thing.

 

CP: Mm-hmm.

 

BFB: When you and I first came to the Garden with the staff from Bartram’s, I had talked to them ahead and we had kind of picked some spots that we thought we could describe. We started walking and I realized those spots were really hilly and uneven and this was a lot further than I remembered it being. It wasn’t a safe or accessible way for you to experience the Garden. So then we regrouped and talked about how to safely navigate the space: what cues can you navigate by, like the position of the sun, or the change from asphalt to a dirt path, or the sound of the passing freight train?

 

CP: Giving people that information up front is key. Frontloading audio descriptions with things that they may need to know or just prepping people for what’s to come. They know to have a little heightened awareness (whatever that means for them) or to be ready to ask for assistance. Putting audio descriptions for navigating around the Garden on your website so that people can access it ahead of time as they plan for their day out is super helpful.

 

BFB: The first try at a description I did after we met had the navigation but it didn’t have the heart. You kept saying, “What would I smell? What is it going to feel like? Is there something I can touch?”

 

CP: “Will I hear something?”

 

BFB:  And then I hear a train go by Bartram’s periodically because there’s a train right outside the grounds and people could orient towards that. The first garden we describe is a rose garden that you can smell when you’re getting close to it.

 

CP: Yes!

 

BFB: Then you can walk around the house and you can feel how big these blocks of stone are because you can feel the ridges, you can feel the carving. There was a great story that there are these three pillars on the porch where you can stand on the ground and feel the base of these pillars. And John Bartram got better at making them as he went along. So if you feel the pillars from one side to the other, they actually get rounder and smoother and it was something that we could share with people that, as you say, told the story about how this was built and what it was built from. Even if you are not a person with a visual impairment, these audio descriptions give you new, expanded ways to learn about Bartram’s Garden.

 

CP: They feel a connection to the story and they’re able to witness it as it progresses. You know those are things they’re going to carry with them and remember them. You want the experience to linger. You don’t want them to say, “Oh, I had such a tough time getting around,” and that be the memory they keep. Creating that immersive experience helps them create a memory that makes them want to come back.

 

Art and nature are human rights.

BFB: And it is your right to have that experience, right? Art is a human right. Being lifted up by nature is a human right. As someone who does audio description I’ve had, you know, audience members say, “Oh, this is such a gift that you’re doing,” but I’ve come to understand that it isn’t a gift. It’s your right to have this access and it is my job to try to make that happen.

 

CP: Definitely. I want organizations to have that same attitude that you have. When I go to venues and I feel like accessibility-related services are an afterthought or just something that was haphazardly put together, it upsets me. So I love it when organizations, especially the ones that we have encountered, are making a full, full-court effort to do their best and to learn and to continually improve. To make accessibility just a natural part of the plan.

 

BFB: What excites you about bringing audio description to Bartram’s Garden and maybe to any kind of garden?

 

CP: Well . . . I think . . . knowing that we are giving people an opportunity to be out in nature where they may have written that particular thing off because they have a visual impairment. We are showing people with visual impairments that you too can have a full life experience with outings with your loved ones or by yourself. You don’t have to be cooped up and fearful in your home if you know that there are access opportunities for all of these arts and cultural experiences in this wonderful city.

 

Knowing that you’re not limited was the most freeing thing for me.

 

Access is for everybody.  It’s about equity.

 

Join us on Saturday, April 19 for Bartram’s Garden’s SpringFest with a special audio description tour beginning at 12:30pm at the Gazebo. Click here to learn more and register for the tour. Listen to the audio descriptions at bartramsgarden.org/audio-descriptions.