Find Harmony at Home

Experience the calming effects of a Zen garden right in your backyard. A Zen garden can help you unwind from a busy day at work and take away the stress and uncertainty caused by COVID-19.

Zen gardens go by many names, such as

  • Healing gardens
  • Japanese gardens
  • Meditation gardens
  • Wellness gardens.

A Healing Garden’s Many Benefits

Numerous health studies have shown that being out in nature or working in a garden helps to relieve stress, improves well-being, and lowers blood pressure. Feeling a light wind, seeing hummingbirds, and other pollinators flitting around the garden, and listening to moving water all bring a sense of serenity to your soul.

In your Japanese garden, you can meditate. Here are six reasons to meditate in nature:

  1. It brings you back to the present and stills your racing thoughts.
  2. It clears your mind so you can feel more in control of your life.
  3. It grounds you again, leaving you feeling more confident and whole.
  4. It helps lower your blood pressure.
  5. It strengthens your immune system.
  6. It improves brain function.

If you’re balancing your work and helping your children with schoolwork, or you’re worried about your family getting COVID-19, you need a space to call your own. Your wellness garden gets you away from all of the noise.

Creating Your Meditation Hideaway

What are the elements of a Zen garden? You want to feel comfortable, safe, and protected. Make your garden space special.

Here are some ideas for your wellness garden:

  1. Make a budget. Granted, creating a budget can be stressful, but you do need to know what elements you can add now and what you might need to wait on.  Also, spending too much money on certain landscape features will make your getaway garden a stressful, rather than a calming, space.
  1. Find a quiet space on your property. It can be a little nook or a corner in the backyard. If your side yard or your front yard makes a perfect spot, then claim it as your meditation garden.
  1. A Zen garden is simple, low maintenance, flows, and is uncluttered. It’s tempting to fill up space, but the secret for relaxing outside is to use only simple elements. A cluttered meditation garden distracts from peace and concentration while an uncluttered space allows you to relax and focus.
  1. Create visual interest and a sense of flow including a curving pathway. Use pavers, stones, or rocks leading to your quiet space. You want to have a seat—whether that’s a park bench, a wicker chair with pillows, or an Adirondack chair to lean back and watch the stars.
  1. Add a water feature. If you’ve looked at other meditative spaces or Japanese tea gardens, you’ll notice a water feature. It can be a pond, a waterfall, or a fountain that moves water. Water calms the senses. Both seeing and hearing water move creates a relaxing atmosphere.
  1. Don’t forget the wind chimes. A breeze moving through wind chimes—wood or metal—soothes the soul. It helps create a sense of peace.
  1. Add boulders to give a sense of grounding. Boulders are sturdy and immovable. If you add a rock garden or a rocky stream leading to a pond, you’ll hear and see movement. Plus, the plants that go into a rock garden give pops of color in contrast to the dark water and stones.
  1. Incorporate calming colors into your Zen garden. Ferns, evergreens, and native plants all add colors that promote relaxation and peace. Plus, native flowering plants invite birds, butterflies, and beneficial pollinators into your healing garden. Watching nature play out in the calmness of your sanctuary will drain the stress away.

Plants also provide texture, height, and structure to your meditation garden. Additionally, low-maintenance and native plants provide fragrance to soothe the soul.

If you have a pond along with a stream leading to it, add a bridge to connect the spaces. And add koi to your pond for color and free entertainment.

 

  1. Make your healing garden unique to you. Since you’re cooped up at home right now, go online and visit different Japanese gardens, check out Pinterest, and go through online design magazines to get some ideas.
  1. Don’t forget about creating a shelter. If you look forward to visiting your Zen garden every day, then add a cover to protect you from sun, wind and rain. You could include a shed, a small pavilion, or some other roofing structure.

How BCLS Landscape Services Can Transform Your Space

If you’re looking for a professional landscape service that will take your design ideas and create a meditation space to call your own, you need to contact BCLS Landscape Services. BCLS serves residential and commercial properties throughout Central Virginia.

Make your appointment today by calling us at (804) 752-0052 or filling out our contact form. We look forward to working with you to create your wellness garden.

Sources:

HGTV.com, “Elements of a Meditation Garden.”

NaturesPath.com, “Creating Your Own Meditation Garden.”

Extension.psu.edu, “How to Create a Healing Garden.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]