I recently heard about a practice called Forest Bathing, which involves spending a few hours in a forest, or at least a sheltered patch of trees, and allowing one’s awareness to settle on all the immediate sensory surroundings. Forest Bathing is supposed to have physical and psychological benefits and I can’t help but think it must. My husband suggested that I try an adaptation: Garden Bathing. One crystalline early morning last week I stepped out into the garden to bathe my senses. Within a couple of minutes I found myself inspecting some recently transplanted Lady’s Mantle and noting guiltily that I’d neglected to water it. I reminded myself that this was not proper Garden Bathing. So I focused on the unmistakable call of a Baltimore oriole that’s built a nest in a nearby maple tree. Lovely. The next thing I knew I was pulling up maple seedlings that have sprung up all over the place. Okay, I concluded. One cannot practice Garden Bathing in one’s own garden! But perhaps other people’s gardens…

This weekend there’s a perfect opportunity to experience the wonders of Garden Bathing. The 30th annual Northampton Garden Tour will take place this Saturday, June 8, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine. The tour will offer six beautiful home gardens in which to immerse one’s senses free from nagging reminders of wilting plants and weeds to be plucked.

I got a sneak peak at one of the gardens on this year’s tour. It belongs to Amy Reiser, who lives on a dead-end street in a quiet Northampton neighborhood, close to town but very private-feeling. Reiser explained that she grew up in New York City and had zero gardening experience until she moved to Shelburne Falls in 1975. She started with a vegetable garden and eventually added a total of 22 assorted flower beds on her expansive property. In 2012, she purchased her present house in Northampton, a standard-issue ranch house that she magically transformed into a distinctive Craftsman-style bungalow. She traded her rocks and clay for sandy soil and her ample space for a smaller in-town site.

Her new property was a “total blank slate,” said Reiser. There was nothing but grass and several mature trees, including a stately shagbark hickory that she jokingly calls her “four-season garbage tree” for the litter of hard-shelled nuts, leaves and twigs it sheds throughout the year. Although she was ready to downsize her garden in the new location, she brought several pieces of her Shelburne Falls garden with her: numerous peonies, seven or eight mature lilac bushes and three picturesque boulders. “I put the boulders on the north side of the house, where nothing would grow,” she said. “There’s one for each of my daughters.”

One of Reiser’s daughters was a landscaper at the time and helped with the layout and foundation of the garden, using granite bricks to outline the beds in graceful sweeping lines that flow around the edge of the property, which is bounded on two sides by a tall wooden fence. Gardens often make good neighbors, and one of the gardener’s beds shares an undefined border with an adjacent garden. Reiser explained that when she was laying out her garden, she and her neighbor agreed to make a “community garden” that bridges the adjoining properties. “I enjoy theirs,” she said. “They enjoy mine.”

Although most of the garden gets plenty of sun, there’s a shady bed in one corner that hosts a lively tapestry of primroses, hellebores, hostas, anemones and ferns. The Shelburne Falls property got too much sun for a shade garden, so shade gardening has been a new learning process. The corner bed is a testament to endless possibilities for spectacular shade gardens.

Numerous trellises and arbors provide diversity and structural interest throughout the garden. Bearded irises in unusual shades such as ivory with an orange beard, deep burgundy and a two-toned yellow and tan. “I like finding unusual things,” said Reiser, pointing to a pot filled with miniature gladioli. At the other end of the size spectrum is a gigantic, spreading tree peony that’s nearly eight feet across. Although the luscious pink blossoms are done for the season, the velvety brown seed pods provide ongoing sensory interest. Reiser enjoys the experimental aspect of gardening. “Gardening is about change,” she said, adding, “This is my playground. It’s fun.”

This spring, for example, a young woman who works in the garden decided that there was “too much grass.” So they put in an additional bed on the south side of the house, an irregularly shaped island that breaks up the expanse of grass in an artfully natural way.

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The property, including a lovely stone deck surrounded by a low wall, is filled with all manner of pots and planters spilling over with colorful combinations of annuals. Nearly black petunias share a pot with tangerine-orange nemesia, a lovely and unexpected pairing. There’s a pot that Reiser got from her aunt that is around 80 years old. She cherishes the continuity and touchstones with other people her garden provides. While she loves all aspects of gardening, she said that her favorite endeavor is container gardening, which lets her mix things up differently every year. And she appreciates that it’s something she can do by herself, an important consideration for all of us aging gardeners.

One of the garden’s many spectacular features are the roses, which are in full bloom this week. Roses are a relatively new endeavor for Reiser, and she clearly has the knack for growing these sometimes finicky plants. There are climbers, drifting shrub roses and tea roses in colors ranging from white and yellow and all shades of orange. Most of her roses enjoy plenty of sunshine, but she has succeeded in growing a beautiful, densely petalled yellow climber in a relatively shady part of the garden. “Roses don’t all need full sun,” she said. She is passionate about fragrance; her roses, all deliciously scented, are a reminder of the wide variety of scents that roses offer.

Roses are not the only fragrant flowers in the garden. Reiser’s abundant peonies are the old-fashioned kind that exude a subtle, elegant scent. A fringe tree fills the garden with intoxicating fragrance in spring. The flowers of a nearby sweetshrub “smell like fruit cocktail,” she said.

Gardens can’t help but reflect the gardener’s own style and tastes, but Reiser’s garden struck me as particularly personal, the result of many years of experimentation, hard work and devotion.

Guiding me through the garden, she often exclaimed, “This makes me happy.” Her delight in gardening is palpable. Visitors on the garden tour can enjoy the experience of Garden Bathing here, immersed in the many sensory delights that Reiser has woven into her own piece of paradise.

The Tour raises funds for the Friends of Forbes Library, Inc. to support Northampton’s historic public library. At each garden, there will be handouts that describe the plantings and volunteer garden guides to answer questions. There are also opportunities to enjoy lively music and observe a plein air painter. Tickets are available in advance for $20 at Bay State Perennial Farm in Whately, Cooper’s Corner in Florence, State Street Fruit Store in Northampton, Gardener’s Supply Company in Hadley, Sugarloaf Gardens in Sunderland and Forbes Library. On tour day, tickets can be purchased for $25 at Forbes Library from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The tickets will provide driving directions and parking guidance to this self-guided, 12-mile tour.

Mickey Rathbun is an Amherst-based writer whose new book, “The Real Gatsby: George Gordon Moore, A Granddaughter’s Memoir,” has recently been published by White River Press.