Your Garden’s Design Can Impact Your Wellness. Here’s How to Optimize Your Yard for Healing.

When it comes to designing landscapes with a mindset for holistic healing, finding a way to enhance all the senses throughout the garden is key. For the team at Benner Landscape Design, a garden must also work as an extension of the surrounding landscape and existing architecture, and, of course, serve those who will be experiencing it. In this plant-packed urban oasis located in Brentwood, California, the team addressed smell through fragrant flowers, sound through the gurgle of water fountains, sight through a cheerful flower garden, and taste with the variety of fruits and vegetables in an adjacent edible garden. While this garden clearly checks all the sensory boxes, our favorite design feature is how native plants are also incorporated into the mix, proving that restorative plantings can be incorporated in a more stylistic and formal way. Read on for Patricia Benner’s tips to inspire a little healing horticulture of your own.

Caitlin Atkinson

Architecturally Inspired

The basics of holistic design boil down to the ideology of “complete system thinking,” where the practice of integrating rather than segregating elements within the garden creates a balanced ecosystem. Here, the Benner team began the process by harmonizing the landscape style with the architecture of the house and then started to fold in inspiration from the surroundings. 

The team wanted this home to evoke the nostalgia of summers spent in New England and integrated a unique plant palette in white blooms such as Abutilon ‘Alpha Centauri,’ Kimono May Snow Azalea, Lagerstroemia ‘Acoma,’ and Camellia japonica ‘Purity,’ which offer a rolling wave of blooms throughout the season—proving the summer perennial gardens of Nantucket and Maine can be reimagined here in the West with just as much romance and the additive benefits of intermixing sustainable practices and plantings.

Caitlin Atkinson

Beneficial Beauty

The Benner team is known for following regenerative and sustainable gardening practices in every project by using a diverse and local plant palette that not only supports pollinators but also is naturally drought-tolerant. While the homeowners wanted an abundant flower garden, there is also a dedication to rewilding the surrounding area using native plants. California Sycamores, Ceanothus ‘Yankee Point,’ and Coffeeberry grace a wooded slope, while a variety of fruit trees on the back slope and raised planter boxes in the organic vegetable garden entice plenty of pollinators for a healthy, robust garden.

Caitlin Atkinson

Zen Zones

Outdoor garden rooms transition smoothly from one to another while providing very different experiences. When dividing a space with a holistic approach, one must look at the full picture and connect plants and features with how the areas will be enjoyed. The Benner team achieves this gracefully in the upper gardens, which allow for relaxation, as well as the visual enjoyment of colorful flowers and visiting wildlife. In the fire pit area, olive trees were planted around the seating area to evoke the feel of an al fresco gathering spot. Peppermint Geranium and Star Jasmine bring fragrances at different times of the day. A meandering walking path sweeps seamlessly down the slope, allowing for active immersion in nature. Even steps leading down from the pool are filled in with fragrant creeping thyme that releases scent underfoot, providing a restorative interaction with the garden down at the smallest level.