Dr Agarwal’s Eye Hospital the comprehensive eye care centre has now come out with the concept of Touch and Smell garden in Bangalore for the visually challenged children.

The garden has 50 varieties of plants along with a small description of these inscribed and embedded in Braille boards which would be placed next to the plants. This will educate visually challenged people to know about different types of plants which are used in our daily use and as well as in medicinal use.

According to the hospital, this initiative is the first-of-its-kind in Bangalore and ninth in the world.

The garden was inaugurated by Prof. Amar Agarwal, chairman cum managing director, Dr Agarwal’s Eye Hospital.

The key objective of the garden is to activate the social behaviour of visually challenged children since most forms of life is governed by the sense of smell & touch. The odour of lavender, the intricate textures in a green leaf and subtle whispers within nature needs listening. Some of common plants include mint, lemon, tulsi etc. The exotic plants such as Pan Kapoor, All spice plant which releases five distinctive odour of all the spices are expected to be a sensory treat for visually challenged children, stated Prof. Agarwal.

We wanted to create this set –up to commemorate the World sight week observed  between October 13 and 20,2011 to ensure that visually challenged children can learn about the plants and their uses,” he added.

Children who are visually challenged can give a wider range of labels to various smells, than normal children. The sense of touch too is quite higher than the normal ones. Apart from mere detection, they can amazingly correlate the abstract relation between a smell and its related textures and shapes.

Visually challenged children from Sri Ramana Maharishi Academy visited the garden and explored the plants.

Dr Agarwal’s Eye Hospital has 14 branches in Chennai apart from leaving its footprints in Villupuram, Kumbakonam, Neyveli, Panruti, Tiruvallur, Vellore, Kanchipuram, Hosur, Krishnagiri, Erode, Dharmapuri, Salem, Tirunelveli,   Tuticorin and centers in other states such as Jaipur (Rajasthan), Bengaluru (Karnataka), Chittoor (A.P), Hyderabad (AP) and moved overseas. It has made its first entry with a tertiary eye care centre at Mauritius. The hospital has received various awards for its inventions and services. These include the global platform for its inventions - Micro-Phakonit which is a Cataract surgery with 0.7 mm size incision and ‘Glued Intraocular Lens Implant’ performed. In February 2009, it performed the world's first Anterior Segment Eye Transplant Surgery was performed on a 4 month old child to treat corneal disorder. The  hospital bagged 3 awards at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ASCRS) Conference. In September 2008, it became the only hospital in the world to receive 3 awards and a certificate of appreciation from the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons (ESCRS) Conference.