How to Design a Healing Garden at Home
Read a design expert’s tips on creating an outdoor space for calming the mind, easing stress and promoting healing
Georgia Madden
3 June 2022
Spending time in the garden can be a wonderful mood lifter and stress reliever. For that reason, hospitals and other health facilities have long incorporated healing gardens into their treatment of patients, family members and staff. But these healing spaces aren’t limited to commercial institutions — they also have a place in the home garden.
We spoke with Evette Moran, designer of the award-winning garden at the Mark Moran Vaucluse senior living facility in New South Wales, Australia, who shared her tips for creating a home garden that uses nature to heal the body and soul.
We spoke with Evette Moran, designer of the award-winning garden at the Mark Moran Vaucluse senior living facility in New South Wales, Australia, who shared her tips for creating a home garden that uses nature to heal the body and soul.
The Benefits of a Healing Garden
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 hearing — are engaged.
This allows visitors to form an emotional connection with the space, which can lift their spirits and speed up the healing process. You’ll also want to make sure the space is comfortable and easy to navigate, so it can be used safely by those who are recuperating or otherwise physically limited.
Find a landscape designer in your area on Houzz
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 hearing — are engaged.
This allows visitors to form an emotional connection with the space, which can lift their spirits and speed up the healing process. You’ll also want to make sure the space is comfortable and easy to navigate, so it can be used safely by those who are recuperating or otherwise physically limited.
Find a landscape designer in your area on Houzz
Key Design Considerations for a Healing Garden
- Sight. When designing your healing garden, think about how the colors in your flowers and foliage will work together. Look to balance plenty of soft, soothing colors with a few pops of energizing brights. Snapdragons are one of my favorite flowers, as they come in a variety of bright and gentle colors.
- 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 favorites. For stones and paving, choose smooth pebbles and curved paving over sharp or rigid options.
- Sound. Consider native plants and other pollinator attractors to draw chirping birds and buzzing bees 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 lemon grass.
- An emotional connection. Add features that your visitors will be drawn to — a trickling water feature or a scented flower that reminds them of their childhood, for example.
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 need shade in the garden during hot summer months. Shade also enhances the visual appeal of a garden — changes in the light and shade in a garden create a dynamic landscape that allows visitors to come back time and time again to something new.
- Seating. Include seating in shaded parts of the garden for rest or reflection.
- Plants 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 the koi pond at our facility, for example, connects us to the ocean.
More Design Tips
- Add the element of surprise. Draw visitors toward different parts of the garden and offer a surprise, whether it’s a mango tree next to a lime tree or a pretty strawberry patch in an unexpected spot.
- Include 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 colors and points of interest. For example, a vegetable garden would allow guests to taste fresh produce, a colorful flower arrangement would be visually appealing, and a native-plant portion would bring in native wildlife and create intriguing sounds.
- Soften lines. Rather than including straight paths, for example, design them so that visitors gently meander through the garden to create a sense of relaxation and wonder.
- Smooth the 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.
What are you working on?
Related Stories
Kitchen Guides
10 Key Kitchen Dimensions You Need to Know
Here are key kitchen dimensions that will help you design like a pro
Full Story
More Room Guides
35 Serene Puja Room Designs
Take a leaf out of these elegantly designed, beautiful prayer rooms on Houzz
Full Story
Decorating Guides
What Are the Benefits of Hiring an Interior Designer?
From furnishing working drawings to beautifying the home, find out how an interior designer plays multifunctional roles
Full Story
More Room Guides
Turn One Room Into Two With These Genius Ideas
Carve out an extra room within your home with these fab room-splitting tips and tricks
Full Story
Bedroom Guides
What Are the Ideal Wardrobe Measurements?
Here are dimensions for different types of wardrobe designs that ensure maximum functionality and storage
Full Story
Architecture
These Indian Homes Know How To Combat Harsh Climate
See how these homes by SPASM, Kumar Moorthy & Associates and JPLUSDARCHITECTS mitigate the ramifications of harsh climate ahead of time
Full Story
Architecture
How to Find an Architect That's Right for You
Make the construction and renovation of your home a pleasant and memorable journey by selecting the right architect
Full Story
Bathroom Guides
Step-by-Step: A Guide to Renovating Your Bathroom
Planning to renovate your bathroom? Learn about the different stages involved in the remodelling process
Full Story
Living Rooms
30 Best Sofa Designs
This guide gives a rundown of sofa types that will leave you spoilt for choices
Full Story
Small Spaces
7 Stylish Ways to Dry Your Laundry In a Small Apartment
Has your drying rack become a perpetual eyesore in your home? These dapper laundry drying solutions have you covered
Full Story
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.