How To Build Your Own Meditative Peace Garden

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The daily grind can be exhausting—when you come home from work, you want a place to relax, unwind, and decompress. If you’re lucky enough to have a backyard, peace gardens can be the perfect escape after a long and difficult workday.

Like the name suggests, peace gardens have an overarching purpose: to provide peace to its inhabitants. That peace can be created in lots of different ways depending on how you prefer to find peace in your own life. For some, peace looks like spending an afternoon sleeping in a hammock in your backyard. For others, it looks like regularly maintaining a fruits and vegetable garden. Whatever type of peace you’re seeking, you can always find it outdoors.

Many peace gardens take inspiration from Japanese Zen gardens and the minimalistic style, but it’s entirely up to you how you want to design your backyard safe space. Let’s take a look at some of the common peace garden additions that will help transform your backyard into a meditative wonderland.

Meditation Labyrinth

Meditation labyrinths have been traced back hundreds of years and can be found in many different cultures. These single winding paths are a common walking meditation practice and can easily be set up in backyards to aid in your inner journey. By slowly following the path from the outside of the labyrinth to the inner area, the meditative state helps calm anxieties, improve creativity, and provide quiet time for peaceful self-reflection.

They may look complex, but building your own meditation labyrinth in your backyard is simple. All you need is a sizable amount of open, level land and building material for the labyrinth outline. You can easily make the outline from stones you’ve collected, but concrete pavers and low hedges are also common materials you find in walking labyrinths.

Bird Bath

Water features aren’t just a beautiful addition to your peace garden, they serve an actual function. The running water drowns out outside noises, while the water itself provides a cool and refreshing spot for birds in your area to rest. If you’re an avid bird watcher, consider also placing bird feeders around your peace garden. Then, all you have to do is sit down, rest, and watch the natural wildlife come to you.

Lighting

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Natural lighting will be your main source of light in your backyard peace garden. But if you want your meditation session to extend after dark, you’ll need to install some extra lighting in your backyard. Don’t install lighting that’s too harsh, you want to keep the lighting soft and gentle to keep that peaceful feeling in your garden. Outdoor string lights are a pretty and cheap way to light up your backyard while still keeping the peace. Candles can also provide a gentle glow, just make sure to stay safe and never leave a lit candle alone.

Plants

No peace garden is complete without the garden part. Plants are an important part of any backyard, but essential for a peace garden. Simply being around nature has been shown to improve moods, stabilize emotions, and help your overall mental health.

You don’t have to spend hours every day keeping your garden immaculate if that’s not how you find peace. Overgrown and natural-looking foliage can provide a better connection with nature if your backyard has a fence, and doesn’t require much upkeep. Whether you prefer to cultivate a full and fruitful vegetable garden or prefer having a handful of plants to nurture, staying close to nature in your garden will make achieving a peaceful state simple.

Noise-Muffling Trees

Finding peace in your backyard garden can be difficult if you live in a noisy neighborhood. Construction, loud neighbors, and cars all contribute to noise pollution and put a damper on your meditation or relaxation. To limit the noise in your peace garden, plant evergreen trees around the perimeter. The natural foliage will act as a noise dampener and keep your backyard quiet and calm.

Columnar trees like Red Sweetgum, European Hornbeam, and Red Maple all grow vertically and can be planted close together to better muffle any outside sounds. If you’re looking for multi-stem trees, Possumhaw Holly, Yaupon Holly, and Birch trees will keep sounds out while also keeping your peace garden looking beautiful.

Whatever you decide to bring into your peace garden, make sure to leave some things out. Try to leave all your frustrations, worries, concerns, and bad feelings behind when you enter your backyard. Make a commitment to keep this space filled with positive energy, and you’ll feel lighter, calmer, and happier every time you enter your peace garden.