How Do I... Create a Healing Garden?
A garden designed for wellness can calm the mind, ease stress and promote healing – here's how to design one
Georgia Madden
27 September 2019
In this practical series, we ask experts to answer your burning design, decorating and gardening questions. Here, Evette Moran, co-founder of the Mark Moran Group – whose Vaucluse, NSW garden received the award for Best Garden Overall in the 2018 Woollahra Garden Awards – tells us how to design a garden that harnesses the power of nature to heal body and soul.
How does nature affect our moods?
Spending time in the garden and among flora can be a wonderful mood lifter. In an era when everyone is so busy and constantly consumed by social media, connecting not just with nature, but with something of true beauty, grounds us and rekindles our sense of wonder and lightness.
Spending time in the garden and among flora can be a wonderful mood lifter. In an era when everyone is so busy and constantly consumed by social media, connecting not just with nature, but with something of true beauty, grounds us and rekindles our sense of wonder and lightness.
How is a healing garden unique?
Healing gardens have a special place in garden design. When you are creating a garden from a healing perspective, it is important to make sure all the senses – sight, smell, taste, touch and sound – are engaged.
This allows visitors to form an emotional connection with the space, which in turn lifts their spirits and can speed up the healing process. You’ll also want the space to be comfortable and easy to navigate so it can be used safely by those who are recuperating, or the elderly.
Thinking of redesigning your garden? Find a landscape architect or designer on Houzz to discuss your vision
Healing gardens have a special place in garden design. When you are creating a garden from a healing perspective, it is important to make sure all the senses – sight, smell, taste, touch and sound – are engaged.
This allows visitors to form an emotional connection with the space, which in turn lifts their spirits and can speed up the healing process. You’ll also want the space to be comfortable and easy to navigate so it can be used safely by those who are recuperating, or the elderly.
Thinking of redesigning your garden? Find a landscape architect or designer on Houzz to discuss your vision
What are the key elements in a healing garden?
- Sight: When designing your healing garden, think about how the colours in your flowers and foliage will work together. Look to balance plenty of soft, soothing colours with a few vivid pops of energising brights. Snapdragons are one of my favourite flowers as they come in a variety of bright and gentle colours.
- Taste: Consider planting citrus trees such as orange, lemon or lime, or vegetables that guests who visit your garden can pick and consume.
- Touch: When selecting plants, take into account their texture – the more variety in texture, the better. Soft ornamental grasses and ferns are two of my favourites. When choosing stones and paving, opt for smooth pebbles and curved paving over sharp or rigid ones.
- Sound: Consider planting natives, such as banksia, bottlebrush and kangaroo paw, which will attract birds, bees and butterflies to your garden.
- Scent: Opt for plants that emit an enticing and calming scent, such as lavender and lemon balm, or choose fragrant herbs such as mint, rosemary or lemongrass.
- Emotional connection: Add in features that your visitors will be drawn to – a comfortable spot to sit, a trickling water feature, a scented flower that reminds them of their childhood, for example.
What are some other appealing additions to a healing garden?
- Water: It has an almost-spiritual element that helps promote flow and energy. Consider adding a pond or water feature to your garden design.
- Shade: Both plants and people will need shade in your garden in the hot summer months. It also adds to the visual appeal of a garden – changes in the light and shade in a garden provide an ever-changing landscape that allows you to come back time and time again to something new. Jacaranda trees are one of my favourites – their deciduous nature provides shade in summer and light in winter.
- Seating: Include seating in shaded parts of the garden for rest or reflection.
- Planting for bird life and bees: Including plants and flora that attract birds and bees keeps the garden active and connects it to the larger environment. The white-faced heron that regularly visits our koi pond, for example, connects us to the ocean.
…And a couple more design tips
- Add the element of surprise: Draw visitors towards different parts of the garden and surprise them with what they’ll see next, whether it’s a mango tree next to a lime tree or a pretty strawberry patch in an unexpected spot.
- Cascading plants: Smooth out hard edges and create a sense of abundance in your healing garden by choosing plants and herbs that have a tendency to spill over walls and onto pathways.
- Create zones: Design different ‘rooms’ within your garden with different colours and points of interest. For example, a vegetable garden would allow guests to taste fresh produce, a colourful flower arrangement would be visually appealing, and a native-plant portion would bring in native wildlife and create intriguing sounds.
- Soften lines: Rather than straight paths, for example, design them so that visitors gently meander through the garden to create a sense of relaxation and wonder.
- Smooth edges: You’ll want to steer clear of jagged edges in hardscaping in a healing garden. Pathways, in particular, should be smooth, safe and comfortable to use – especially if elderly visitors will be using the garden.
Your turn
Did you find this story useful? Tell us in the Comments below. And don’t forget to save your favourite images, like this story and join the conversation.
More
Want more garden advice? Don’t miss last week’s Pro Panel: What Should I Do With My Big, Boring Backyard?
Did you find this story useful? Tell us in the Comments below. And don’t forget to save your favourite images, like this story and join the conversation.
More
Want more garden advice? Don’t miss last week’s Pro Panel: What Should I Do With My Big, Boring Backyard?
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I have spent so much money collecting seeds, flower pots, a green house, and more. As soon as I can afford to buy a house with a lawn I cannot wait to make internet photo worthy.
I never heard of a "healing garden". The joke is on me, because, after reading your article, I now know the name for what I've been trying to do all along. I love this article. Thanks! My yard is mid-sized I guess, less than a quarter acre and then take away what the house sits on. But I've put a couple chairs in four places. We stop and sit in them at various times of the day, but there's one pair that serves double duty as just a visual treat…hard to explain. So I applaud your inclusion of seating. Some of my favorite mints are monarda and agastache. Beautiful flowers, and the agastache are showy a long time. The monarda make great fillers around young shrubs until the shrubs can fill in. One thing I've found for creating a peaceful space is to make the plantings of a single thing larger rather than smaller to avoid a cluttered look (not peaceful). I have a five foot wide bed in one area and found plantings of 6-9 feet long are most pleasing. I had to go through a cluttered phase to find things that would thrive. Alternating and repetition is peaceful too. Once I find something that does well in my yard, I repeat it so it's in at least three spaces, though they don't have to be seen all at once.
These are the two chairs I find as inviting to look at as they are to sit in at sunset. They face west.