Therapeutic Benefits Of Landscaping

By Author: Kate Latierra
Total Articles: 13
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Agree or disagree, the truth is we humans are part of nature. Every so often, our body and soul will hunger for a connection with the naturally created world. Our homes, whether situated in the rural or urban communities can host a lawn or garden that serves as our personal healing space.

There are a growing number of places called healing landscapes or healing gardens where you can visit and connect with nature. It would be more therapeutic, though, if you drew up your own landscape design and selected the plants to go into your own healing garden. Therapy starts as you prepare the lawn or backyard to which you will apply your healing landscape design and continues on as you plant the shrubs, vines, herbs, and trees. The whole process of landscaping at a manageable scale is in itself a form of therapy.

So whether you’re intentionally creating a healing garden or simply landscaping your property, there are therapeutic benefits.

The Benefit of Silence and Solitude
The world has become a noisy place literally and otherwise. Over the years, a once sleepy town touched by the fingers of so called progress ...
... can morph into an all-concrete landscape design with glaring neon lights, gigantic billboards and a mad jumble of blaring noises coming from all directions. Living in such a place can drain the soul and spirit hence someone coined the phrase “get away from it all”.

These days, that often-used expression not only means getting out of the city and heading for the eye-refreshing green landscape design of the countryside. Getting away also means “unplugging” oneself from all the high tech gadgets of this electro-digital age. It’s not just the surroundings that are noisy even our head contains so much noise that thinking clearly takes much concentrated effort.

Landscaping your yard or lawn provides the opportunity for silence and solitude where you are able to clear your head and gain a new perspective while routinely mulching, trimming hedges or watering plants to attain the landscape design you had envisioned. It is in these silences where the heart, soul, and mind are rejuvenated and reconnected to the source of life.

Personal or DIY landscaping opens our eyes to the rightness of being occasionally with just yourself. Solitude is not being alone and lonely. It is rather not having unsolicited opinions intentionally or unintentionally fired at you, not having other minds coerce you into an attitude or behavior you don’t genuinely like. Landscaping provides a solitude where you can center yourself again and regain self-equilibrium. In the solitude of bringing your landscape design to life, you find your faith again.

The Benefit of Beauty
The worn-out saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” may still ring true whether applied to another human being or to one’s surroundings. If you choose to see the beauty in the obvious ugliness you will find it. But every so often the landscape design composed of high rise buildings, busy streets, flashing lights and thumping music takes a toll on us humans.

Landscaping offers the opportunity of touching, seeing, smelling, feeling, and even tasting the natural beauty of divine creation. To take part in creating nature’s beauty through landscaping refreshes the senses and the spirit. The theme for your landscape design can even be that of herbs and plants that become sanctuaries for helpful creatures like butterflies, bees, and birds.

The Benefit of Renewal
Landscaping is a key to renewal. Each time you modify your original landscape design by selecting a different plant or flower or shrub to go into the landscape or garden, newness begins. Landscaping and gardening provides a real view of how nature is born and how it grows. The seasons that affect our landscape design stirs anticipation within the spirit. After a long winter, we wonder what creatures and plants have survived the cold. Nature surprises us with new life despite the harsh conditions. This in turn brings us renewed joy and hope.

When deciding to create your own landscape design or when considering DIY landscaping, look not only on the value it adds to your home. View it as your source of therapy and healing.