Landscape
8. Design to cut down maintenance. Your garden won’t feel like a serene retreat if you are constantly reminded by the weeding, pruning, mowing and other garden chores that need to be done. Design your garden, or rethink certain areas of your landscape, to require less week-to-week maintenance. One idea: Reducing the size of your lawn and replacing it with a seating area and gravel patio that only requires occasional raking can seriously cut down the time spent on weekly garden chores.Conversely, having a more relaxed idea of what your garden “should” look like and allowing plants to be a little more natural or leaves to linger on pathways can also help reduce time spent on maintenance.
1. Create a threshold. Marking the garden’s entrance or change from one area to the next gives you an opportunity to create a physical transition. Think of it as a nudge to yourself to leave at the gate some of the stress and worries you carry and enter the garden feeling a little lighter. Gates, arbors and other visible thresholds can also be beautiful garden features in their own right. The circular arbors in this North Carolina garden, for example, mark the passage from the main garden to a woodland area and add to its serenity.Charmed Circles: Bring Serenity to Your Garden With a Moon Gate
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