No one can deny the stunning natural beauty that exists in our world. Whether or not you’ve been lucky enough to observe in person Claude Monet’s exquisite garden in Giverny or the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, even the photos that portray our Earth’s eco-masterpieces will take your breathe away. These landscape masterpieces are nature’s own works of art that have been enhanced by human hands.
Landscape design is so much more than cutting the grass, planting some flowers and trimming the bushes; it’s the opportunity for us to construct havens of healing in your own backyard. Can you recall the feeling you get when you step outside and take in a deep breathe of fresh air, along with all the beautiful smells and sounds? Now imagine this feeling amplified. Your garden should ultimately be a sanctuary of peace and tranquility for your soul.
The ways in which we enhance an outdoor paradise or garden expands farther than any of us might even imagine. Let us share just a few of the extraordinary ways we here at LandPatterns can contribute to your surrounding environment.
Wildlife Gardens
Incorporating wildlife in a garden allows a thriving menagerie to exist just steps from your home. The research and detail required to effectively construct a garden that sustains wildlife requires sufficient research and attention to detail. For example, including selective plants that are conducive to the particular desired insects and wildlife, as well as integrating critical water features to support this habitat. Whether you find solace in being surrounded by butterflies, hummingbirds, frogs, honeybees, or a combination of biota, the possibilities of customization are in fact endless.
Once your garden has achieved an abundant level of plant and animal integration, you can actually acquire a certification from the Department of Texas Parks and Wildlife. These certificates and plaques will showcase your backyard garden as an official native garden space, your own personal nature preserve of sorts. Having a therapeutic environment in such close proximity can be a valuable asset for not only your happiness, but for your health.
Eco- Sanctuaries Celebrating Life
Hospitals are commonly known as a place to avoid at all costs, filled with particularly unpleasant smells and ill patients. This is a stereotype that we have set out to overturn through eco-therapy. “Celebration gardens” are a place for patients and their loved ones to reflect and heal as they undergo life-changing illnesses and healthcare treatments. For illustration, with the use of strategically placed plexiglass to enhance the use of light throughout the garden and scattered meditation spaces, patients explore the grounds and unearth a sense of peace there.
Every design is meticulously executed based on the clients’ wants and needs. For DFW-based Cook Childrens Hospital garden space, it’s designed so that “it’s reflective of what they want but also what the patients are going to be wanting out of that experience as well. Not just designing something that makes us feel good, but that is going to be beneficial and helpful for patients who will actually be in those gardens” says Marc Funderburk, President of LandPatterns, a landscape design company based in Dallas.
“People who were going through life-changing illnesses, especially the children, parents, the brothers and sisters would go out and walk the labyrinth and find some consolation peace within the garden so that no matter what was happening with the particular patient they were able to find some solace.”
There is very special meaning in these kinds of environments because they truly do impact and affect people’s lives.
A Total Sensory Experience
The design possibilities that can go into a LandPattern garden design are countless. There is aromatic, acoustic and optic value in every garden design. As Marc says, “it’s a total sensory experience. It’s not just the visual aspect of it, but it’s the smells that accompany a garden, the tactile aspects of a garden when you go by and you touch a plant.”
With these custom gardens, we’re brought back to nature. We’ll develop a sense of connection as to who and what we are. Each space we design, whether individual or public, involves the client as an integral part of the process because it’s truly a reflection of what they want in their environmental paradise.
In the words of Marc Funderburk, “the overall feel you get from a well-designed garden space just walking through it brings you back to nature, which is where we all come from. It gives you a sense of connection to who we are and what we are.”
Landscapes are more than plants; they are unique everlasting garden spaces meant for reflection, meditation and to simply serve as your own personal happy place.