Why Do Plants Make Us Happier? Five Fascinating Reasons
When I was a professional gardener, I made a lot of people happy by helping them with their gardens. Usually, I either created and installed a new garden or maintained the one they already had. Regardless, after my work was finished, my clients often told me their garden was their happy place. It relieved them from stress. Reset their energy. I understood this since my own garden made me happy too, even when there was a lot of work to do. So I started to wonder: why exactly did plants…
Author J.A. Jance Imagined a Colorful Epic Garden
You know I love visiting gardens so when thriller author J. A. Jance invited me to tour her Seattle-area garden, I jumped at the chance. It’s a wonderfully imagined colorful space inspired by an epic poem by C. Day-Lewis. Jance fell in love with the poem decades ago at a reading. “Baucis and Philemon” is based on Ovid’s mythical tale, which tells the story of how Zeus and Hermes visited a town where Baucis and Philemon, a simple couple who lived in a rustic cottage, took them in and showed…
#18 A Book on How to Create a Sacred Garden Space
Jessi Bloom’s Creating Sanctuary is a beautiful guide on how to honor your land while honoring your self. It’s part garden design, part plant-based medicine, part soul-healing. She talks about creating a sacred garden space that aligns with your spiritual self before advising on how best to care for that self, physically and mentally. Though the premise sounds a little woo-woo, I found the book provides both inspiration and information in fair proportions. As she says, we all want “peacefulness, protection from a harsh world, and rejuvenation.” So having an…
#1 Do Plants Make You Happier?
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about plants and mental health. Does having plants make you happier? They’ve made me happy for over two decades now and in turn, as a professional gardener I made many people happy by helping them with their gardens. Over the years, my clients have told me how, almost like magic, whenever they spend time in their gardens, their stress disappears. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing either. They can be weeding or sitting with a drink or even taking a phone call. Regardless of…
How to Make a Plant Combination That Pops
Creating a plant combination that pops is tricky. You have to use plants that like similar conditions of light, water, and soil. Then you have to create an overall design that incorporates varying shapes and colors that both clash and recall each other’s characteristics. While it takes a bit of work, the general rules of it can be learned. Earlier this summer, my friend Angela who’s a container designer created this lovely arrangement for part-sun with a general potting soil. So I thought I’d talk about why it works so…
