an overall calming effect, blend fragrant plants and soothing color palettes. Your plant choices become healers, aromatherapy, and sensory stimulators. Use them to fill in around seating, pathways and other hardscape in the garden. (It goes without saying that you would avoid plants with spiky or thorny habits.)
Security
Add structure, like a pergola, or plant trees as an overhead canopy. This provides a sense of shelter and comfort, much like the ceiling of a house. Garden walls, whether living plants or built structures, define the area and make us feel secure and safe.
Privacy
Create a haven. Privacy screens and hedges block out uninvited eyes and undesirable views.
Rooms
Divide an area from the busy activity of an outdoor space. A distinct entry point trough an arbor or gate reinforces the idea that you have walked into a special space.
Outdoor living
Are you planning for an outdoor bed, shower, bathtub, hot tub, or seating? This is where comfort is imperative. Bring all of the luxuries of home outside. Create a sleeping area in a quiet place shaded from bright daylight. For a seating respite, choose comfortable outdoor furniture. Place it where it captures your favorite time of day or where you will frequent it. Buffer a bathtub or shower from prying eyes, inclement weather and intruders by surrounding it with plants and privacy structures. If a hot tub is already installed as part of the home, create a relaxing view by planting a beautiful tree as a focus or bring in elegant, colorful pottery and surround it with colorful plants. Look for ways to integrate the hot tub into the landscape so it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb. For the undesirable views you cannot change, hide them with fencing or large plants that billow and camouflage.
Even the simplicity of a small patio or balcony becomes a retreat by placing pottery and fragrant herbs to create your surroundings. Finish with comfortable, deep-cushioned seating and a table.
Personal space
Be selfish, this is a place to read, eat, sleep, bathe or shower. Make it personal.
Protection from the elements
Know your garden space well by watching how the sun plays in it – note the warmth of the morning sun or a cool shady spot from the heat of the sun. Position your space very purposefully. If your favorite spot needs shade from hot sun, consider a pergola that will filter the light and cool the air. You can create spaces to use year-round by adding a garden shed that can be heated and gives protection from rain and snow. Or re-style a greenhouse once used for nurturing plants into a living space to nurture your soul.
Sound
Outside noise influences our ability to relax and many times in a garden it is sound we cannot control, like a noisy street or neighborhood. You may need to add desirable sounds: water bubbling from a pottery fountain or the splash of a waterfall to help drown out unwelcome noise. Plants can also be strategically placed, such as bamboo and tall ornamental grasses, to catch wind and rustle organic sounds through a space. Use plant varieties to encourage birds to nest and shelter, to add their vocalization as background noise.
The Importance of Texture
Much has been said about the sense of smell, sight and sound, but the sense of touch brings heightened awareness as well. Soothing massage, water against skin in a bath, the feel of hot or cold temperature; the tingle of skin by application of the spa treatments, everything done by touch. This shows another element to be mindful of in a sanctuary space: the texture and feel of plants, fabrics and furniture.
In a garden, plants with plush leaves like lamb’s ear (Stachys byzantina), the quilted leaves of hosta, and soft ornamental grasses add texture. The bark of trees with peeling layers, like paperbark maple (Acer griseum), or the soft, smooth sheen of Tibetan flowering cherry (Prunus serrula) are visual texture in mixed plantings. Consider adding touchable flowers and seed heads, like ornamental Alliums, the downy, soft flowers of Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas) and the silky fragrant petals of gardenia.
Fabrics against skin quicken the sense of touch, but there is a remembrance of how it will feel just by the sight of the texture.
It is not hard for many of us to imagine an early experience of raw, scratchy wool on freshly showered skin. Fabric from linens, towels, robes, pillows and furniture covers needs to feel comforting, embracing. For fabrics that touch skin after a treatment, choose textures of natural, soft cotton, and the smoothness of silk.
If you have the luxury to create a dedicated, private spa space and are able to select the material for construction, give careful thought to the texture of floors and walls. The closer to a natural material such as bamboo or smooth wood, the more comforting the texture and feel of the space.
■ INSIDE YOUR HOME: THE SPA SURROUNDINGS ■
You know the moment you walk through the door of a resort spa. You feel indulged. Natural wood, greenery and earthen tones surround you. The fragrance of fresh herbs lingers in the air. You are handed a fluffy, cotton robe to change in to. The music, the lights, the fragrance, all capture your senses. The atmosphere is intentional and carefully designed to envelope and prepare you for the rest of the treatment. The environment is really a part of the healing. It begins to lower your blood pressure and blot out the stress of the day.
Find your space
Go ahead, steal ideas from luxurious destination spas and recreate the experience at home. Most of us do not have the extravagance of space to set aside as the spa room, so get creative and find ways to make space. Choose a relaxing area where you can feel separate from the usual activity of the home. The bathroom is typically the chosen space because of the access to water and a tub, plus a door that locks! Keep a basket of spa essentials ready for those times you choose to make the everyday bathroom into your own private spa destination. If there is another room inside that is more relaxing, then use it. Not all spa treatments need a tub.
CREATE THE ATMOSPHERE
