Fill Your Garden With Visions of Serenity
These 9 ideas can make your garden feel like a sanctuary designed just for you
Lauren Dunec Hoang
5 June 2022
Houzz Editor; landscape designer and former garden editor for Sunset Magazine and in-house designer for Sunset's Editorial Test Garden. Her garden designs have been featured in the Sunset Western Garden Book of Landscaping, Sunset Western Garden Book of Easy-Care Plantings (cover), Inhabitat, and POPSUGAR.
Houzz Editor; landscape designer and former garden editor for Sunset Magazine and... More
Gardens of every shape and size can be places of sanctuary — somewhere to go to rejuvenate and take a break from the rush of daily life. But while the calming ability of gardens is universal, what specifically brings you a feeling of serenity in a garden can be quite personal. You might prefer smooth lawns and neatly trimmed shrubs, while others may feel more at ease in gardens that are a little bit wild, with rambling vines and fallen leaves left on walkways.
If you’re looking for ways to feel more at peace in your garden, here are nine ideas for cultivating serenity. Which ones resonate with your vision of a tranquil garden?
If you’re looking for ways to feel more at peace in your garden, here are nine ideas for cultivating serenity. Which ones resonate with your vision of a tranquil garden?
1. Simplify Your Planting Scheme
Large swaths of a single plant species, or a few, act as places for the eye to rest in the landscape. While you may want more diversity in places like perennial borders, look for areas of your garden — beneath trees or on either side of walkways — that could benefit from mass planting. Your landscape as a whole could feel more serene as a result.
Large swaths of a single plant species, or a few, act as places for the eye to rest in the landscape. While you may want more diversity in places like perennial borders, look for areas of your garden — beneath trees or on either side of walkways — that could benefit from mass planting. Your landscape as a whole could feel more serene as a result.
2. 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.
Find a landscape architect in the Houzz pro directory
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.
Find a landscape architect in the Houzz pro directory
3. Choose a Soothing Color Palette
Cool colors like blues, silvers and greens, as well as neutrals, can feel more serene in a landscape than hotter reds, yellows, pinks and oranges. That being said, the colors that make you feel calm and peaceful can be different from those of the next person.
Select plants and hardscape materials in colors that you personally find calming, and arrange them together in large groupings. For example, a purple monochromatic planting of salvia and catmint give a relaxing feeling to this path in a Portland, Maine, landscape by Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design.
Browse flowers and plants by type, color and growing needs
Cool colors like blues, silvers and greens, as well as neutrals, can feel more serene in a landscape than hotter reds, yellows, pinks and oranges. That being said, the colors that make you feel calm and peaceful can be different from those of the next person.
Select plants and hardscape materials in colors that you personally find calming, and arrange them together in large groupings. For example, a purple monochromatic planting of salvia and catmint give a relaxing feeling to this path in a Portland, Maine, landscape by Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design.
Browse flowers and plants by type, color and growing needs
4. Embrace Repetition
In the same way that mass plantings can have a calming effect in the landscape, repetition in form and color can as well. Take a look at this simple poolside planting in a California backyard. The repeated form of four sculptural cactuses (visually doubled by the reflection) creates a simple, balanced design that inspires calm.
In the same way that mass plantings can have a calming effect in the landscape, repetition in form and color can as well. Take a look at this simple poolside planting in a California backyard. The repeated form of four sculptural cactuses (visually doubled by the reflection) creates a simple, balanced design that inspires calm.
5. Add a Water Element
Perfect for bringing the peaceful sound of water to a garden of any size, recirculating fountains can be easier to install than they may seem. Almost any ceramic pot can be turned into a recirculating fountain with the help of some basic plumping equipment and a trough to hold the pump.
For urban gardens, in particular, water features that have a trickling or splashing sound can help mask the noise of the city and enhance the serenity of your patio or balcony.
Find outdoor water features in the Houzz Shop
Perfect for bringing the peaceful sound of water to a garden of any size, recirculating fountains can be easier to install than they may seem. Almost any ceramic pot can be turned into a recirculating fountain with the help of some basic plumping equipment and a trough to hold the pump.
For urban gardens, in particular, water features that have a trickling or splashing sound can help mask the noise of the city and enhance the serenity of your patio or balcony.
Find outdoor water features in the Houzz Shop
6. Plant Something for Fragrance
Scent can be one of the strongest triggers for memory. If there’s a certain fragrance you remember from childhood or a scent from a place you’ve visited and felt peaceful, adding this fragrance to your garden can transport you back. Nostalgia aside, catching a whiff of a fresh fragrance — like citrus blossoms, sweet peas in bloom, Sarcococca flowers or thyme crushed underfoot — can make a garden feel like a serene, almost otherworldly retreat.
Scent can be one of the strongest triggers for memory. If there’s a certain fragrance you remember from childhood or a scent from a place you’ve visited and felt peaceful, adding this fragrance to your garden can transport you back. Nostalgia aside, catching a whiff of a fresh fragrance — like citrus blossoms, sweet peas in bloom, Sarcococca flowers or thyme crushed underfoot — can make a garden feel like a serene, almost otherworldly retreat.
7. Add Secluded Spots for Relaxing
Even if you have a larger area for outdoor entertaining, adding a more private seating area can help encourage you to slow down and enjoy a different area of the garden. Half-hidden areas, like those under a tree canopy or tucked out of sight from the house, can enhance the feeling of “getting away” in the garden.
Shop for outdoor pillows and cushions
Even if you have a larger area for outdoor entertaining, adding a more private seating area can help encourage you to slow down and enjoy a different area of the garden. Half-hidden areas, like those under a tree canopy or tucked out of sight from the house, can enhance the feeling of “getting away” in the garden.
Shop for outdoor pillows and cushions
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 requires only 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.
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 requires only 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.
9. Welcome Birds
Connecting with the natural environment by inviting birds into your yard is another way to make a garden feel at once peaceful and more alive. Hang a feeder or choose a water feature with birds in mind — they often like shallow water and always like it to be clean — and wait for a few days for birds to “discover” your garden.
Make Your Garden a Haven for Backyard Birds
Connecting with the natural environment by inviting birds into your yard is another way to make a garden feel at once peaceful and more alive. Hang a feeder or choose a water feature with birds in mind — they often like shallow water and always like it to be clean — and wait for a few days for birds to “discover” your garden.
Make Your Garden a Haven for Backyard Birds
Houzz readers: What makes your garden feel peaceful and serene? Please tell us in the Comments.
More on Houzz
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More on Houzz
Read more landscape design guides
Browse landscape photos
Find a landscape contractor
Shop for your outdoor spaces
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The principals listed in this article are excellent! It took me a long time to realize the importance of large plantings. Small planting of this and that repeated in different microclimates in the yard helped me find the best spot, but created such an unsettling cluttered look. I was really happy to get past that stage and pleased by the large 6-9 ft long x 4-5 ft wide plantings for each cultivar.
Maraly Wagner this is so beautiful! Where is this?
When we bought our house eight years ago, it came with a beautiful garden, front and back. There isn't any lawn. Now I love a lush green spread of grass as much as the next person, but the lot was already established as all garden and garden steps with stone walkways in the back...set in stone you might say. So I had a lot to learn.
Most of it dies down to the ground during the winter, which in turn creates a wonderful feeling of rejuvenation when it starts up again in the spring. In the summer when the temps are above 72 in time for my morning cup of coffee, you'll find me in the screen porch watching the sun light up section by section as it gets higher in the sky.
I don't use bird feeders when things are growing in the garden. But we do have 2 birdbaths which supply us with hours of entertainment. I also have some hummingbird feeders hanging by the porch so I can catch a glimpse of those tiny, busy beauties for the few months they visit.
Maybe it's my age, or maybe it's hiding from Covid. But the peace and serenity my husband and I get from this lovely garden is truly a gift.