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Create Your Perfect Space: Cultivate Your Garden With Intention


(This is part 1 of a 3-part series – a Spring Manifesto – to help you set your intention, seek inspiration, and begin the curation process to create a holistic and restorative garden space.)

It’s spring (or almost)! It’s a season of new beginnings and fresh starts, and it’s natural as your outside changes to desire changes, inside, too.

Wherever your heart is at this spring, your garden is ready to reflect what you need most from it. So I have a question for you.

What are your purest desires for your garden?

Health? Peace? Rejuvenation?
What’s on your Wishing Tree?

Let me be direct – here you are reading a blog written by a restorative garden designer. So do tell, are you yearning to connect with the life force and have a beautiful, sacred space?

Garden design, especially restorative garden design, is not about landscaping. Anyone can landscape by coming up with few ideas, buying some plants and plunking them down into an exterior space.

And what does that get you? A lampshade. It’s merely cosmetic & decorative. And it may make it a little more cheerful for a few weeks until the new plants and purchases fade. I see what you are really searching for – there’s an intention.

You go outdoors to fill up and let go. You want a deeper connection. You want to be in your space and find freedom from obligations and all of the things you do for other people every day and just have this moment. Just for you.

That’s what you want from your garden space. That’s what you need from your outdoor living space.

You can have that space your soul is longing for.

Truly. It’s a matter of transformative art + heart + science (and I’ll keep the science easy-breezy).

This is my gift to you this spring. At the end of this three-part spring manifesto, you will have set your intention for your space, found your sacred sources of inspiration, and begun the curation process to start creating your restorative garden.

So let’s begin with intention.

Intention in·ten·tion (ĭn-těn’shən)

n.

  1. An aim that guides action.
  2. The process by which or the manner in which a wound heals.

A healing garden is about intention. For a garden in the healthcare realm, we’d look to the treatment plan. For you, it’s how you will feel good-better-best, because of and while you’re in, your outdoor space. And since intention is related to both how we take action and how we heal, every restorative garden begins with this.

The dynamic researchers and professors of enviropsychology at the University of Michigan, Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, lend us this tidbit about nature and Attention Restoration Theory.

Wherever we sit, the influences of our environment (read: landscape) impact how we manage the immediate task at hand and directly impact the healing we may experience, and our personal and unique life experiences influence what we need and how we see our ‘land.’

Meaning: The outside space you long for in times of stress is embedded in your genetic make-up.

Yep. You come programmed that way. It’s in your DNA nature. No two Red Birds are the same, and neither are any two healing garden spaces. This knowledge is a wonderful gift – knowing your perfect space isn’t the same as anyone else’s gives you more freedom to express your precious self outdoors.

Research repeatedly tells us about better recovery rates for patients and care staff and families less stressed when views to sensitively and intentionally designed gardens/naturescapes are available in hospital rooms. (Has this happened for you, too? Has for me!)

Documented transformation attributed to green views are:

  • Decreased blood pressure, muscle tension and sense of pain
  • Elevated mood
  • Relief from stress
  • Increased immune functioning
  • Better sleep and concentration ability
  • Improved self-discipline

Sign me up, right?

Creating an intentional restorative space gives your mind’s eye something to see beyond a stressful situation. It’s that scene you see when someone suggests you “go to your happy place.” We hold calming, soothing nature-based scenes in our memory and draw upon them during the rough patches.

For you, I want that to be in real time –

Set Your Intention

For some clients, the intention set is one word: serenity, sanctuary, beauty, renewal… What’s your wish? What word would you hang from your Wishing Tree that describes that precious, possibly secret hope for you and those who share in your outdoor sanctuary space?

Today, spend some time choosing your intention for your garden space. Creative forces flow through you.  Trust being present so that your creative spirit may flourish, allowing yourself to cultivate the most right and healing intention.

Share your intention on social media by tagging me @annieredbird using #HealingGardenHappyPlace so that I might hold that scene for you in my #GardenHeart.

(And then, Pin, pass on, Instagram this series this with someone who could use the healing power of nature in their life.)

Ready for part 2 of this manifesto? Find inspiration to discover your secret garden’s main ingredient waiting for you here in part 2 of this series. 

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