How to Design a Horticultural Therapy Space for Mental Wellness
Do you feel calmer and more grounded when immersed in nature? If so, it may be because plants and green spaces are beneficial to our mental health and overall well-being.1 In fact, exposure to green spaces can even improve the quality of sleep, which has a knock-on effect on both our mental and physical health.2
Over the last few decades, therapists have been working to harness this healing power of nature to create a type of treatment called “horticultural therapy.” This type of therapy uses gardening activities to address peoples’ mental health needs and improve their well-being.
In this article, we discuss various aspects of how to build a healing garden, giving you horticultural therapy space ideas. However, if your mental health is affecting your day-to-day life and well-being, it’s always advised to speak to a professional.
In the meantime, read on to discover:
- What horticultural therapy is
- The benefits of horticultural therapy spaces
- Key principles of designing a therapeutic garden
- How to plan your horticultural space
- Outdoor healing garden features, including sensory and mindfulness elements
- How Mission Connection can help you create and develop your therapy garden
What Is Horticultural Therapy?
Horticultural therapy is a therapeutic tool that incorporates garden and nature activities into a tailored treatment plan to address a client’s mental health needs. It has been shown to be beneficial in treating a variety of mental health challenges, including depression and anxiety – especially when used as part of a holistic treatment plan.3
Additionally, there’s evidence to suggest that natural spaces improve our ability to deal with stressful situations by decreasing stress responses in the brain.4 Therefore, a well-planned horticultural therapy space could offer sanctuary and act as a healing environment that encourages us to relax, unwind, and restore.
Ideally, when designing a therapeutic garden, it’s best to bring together nurturing and healing elements of nature with sensory stimulation. The most effective outdoor healing garden features natural elements that adapt to someone’s needs. For instance, some areas may offer moments of calm and reflection, while others may provide opportunities for creativity, engagement, and interaction.
Key Principles of Designing a Therapeutic Garden
Designing a therapeutic garden requires careful consideration and planning. Before you begin, it’s good to take some time to think about your key principles, including the intention of the garden space, for example:
- Who is the garden going to be used by?
- What purpose will the therapy garden serve (such as rehabilitation, calming, reflection, inspiration, social cohesion)?
- What kind of activities do you plan to host there?
One of the most important aspects to consider when you start to think about how to build a healing garden is safety. The health and safety of all garden users, including patients, therapists, members of the public, and any other users, must be protected.
Special safety considerations for this type of project include deciding whether the garden will be used by anyone considered vulnerable. This includes children, the elderly, or users who require extra support due to a physical or mental impairment, for example, dementia.
It’s possible to perform a risk assessment on the garden space to:
- Identify any hazards
- Decide on control measures
- Reduce risks
Hazards include things like uneven ground, sharp edges, slippery surfaces, or risk of flooding. Once these are identified, you can start to think about what controls to put in place to minimize risks and keep everyone safe. For example, to mitigate flooding risk, you could ensure that the garden has adequate drainage.
Aside from safety, accessibility is also an important consideration when planning your garden layout for mental health therapy. For instance, you could think about the following factors.
Accessibility Tips for Creating a Mental Health Garden:
- Ensure that the garden can be used by a wide range of users, which may include wheelchair users and people with limited mobility
- Think about practical aspects such as signage, pathways, water access, and places to store tools and equipment
- Consider any legal, zoning, planning requirements, or permits that you need to apply for
Once you have the safety, practical, and accessibility aspects covered, you can start to think about the more creative and fun aspects of building a therapeutic garden, for example:
- How to make the garden space calm and relaxing
- Ways to engage the five senses within the garden area
- What kinds of flora and fauna you want in the garden
- Tactics to encourage wildlife and insects into the outdoor space
After considering these aspects, it’s time to start planning your horticultural space.
Planning Your Horticultural Space: How to Build a Healing Garden
Designing a horticultural therapy space is a big task. So, before the physical planning stage can begin, you need to consider where your horticultural therapy space will be situated. For example, will it be in a community allotment? On hospital grounds? Or part of the courtyard in a retirement home? Your garden should be designed to be compatible with the space available to you and the type of land you are building on.
After the space is decided on, you may want to start designing a therapeutic garden with a physical plan. For instance, you could draft it out using paper and a pen, or via more sophisticated electronic means, such as using a 3D modelling program. Additionally, a collaborative approach between several people who understand nature space design for mental wellness often yields the most cohesive, effective results.
The scope of your project may also reflect your budget. If finances are an issue, you could look into fundraising or whether there are any government schemes that could assist.
Horticultural Therapy Space Ideas
A therapy garden can be designed with multiple intentions in mind, with different areas designed and zoned for different uses.
For example, a therapeutic garden for anxiety relief could include quiet spaces and be designed with calmness and relaxation in mind. Popular plants for an anxiety garden may include calming camomile, and a running water feature may add an additional level of soothing.5 A mindfulness garden may also be a good idea for soothing anxiety.
For people with depression, the intention of a healing garden may be to improve emotional wellness, incite creativity, or inspire self-care. Colorful floral bursts, chirping of birds, buzzing of bees, or the sight of butterflies fluttering between plants may lift mood, even for a moment.
Therefore, deciding what to plant in the garden, such as flowers, plants, fruit trees, vegetables, or herbs, is an important component. Keep in mind the weather and climate in the area, as well as the soil type. You should select items for the garden that are likely to thrive and don’t require intensive upkeep.
In these ways, gardening or nature therapy activities could potentially help people take steps towards improved mental wellness. However, using horticultural therapy to boost mental health is most effective when combined with other therapeutic tools, for example, psychotherapy.
Sensory and Mindfulness Design Elements
Sensory stimulation is important for mental health. A 2021 study found that people reported reduced stress levels, enhanced well-being, and improved productivity after spending time in a sensory garden.6 Thus, when designing a sensory garden for therapy, you may want to think about how to incorporate different sensory features.
A multi-sensory approach means incorporating elements in your garden that appeal to all five senses: sight, touch, taste, smell, and sound.
Some sensory garden inspiration ideas include:
- Sight: Use vibrant, colorful flowers like sunflowers, peonies, or camellias
- Touch: Incorporate plants with different textures and attributes, designing tactile activities around them
- Taste: Plant fruit trees, vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers within the garden
- Smell: Include strongly scented herbs such as mint, rosemary, or lavender
- Sound: Consider adding a running water feature and planting flowers that attract birds, bees, and other insects
Creating a mindfulness garden could also include spaces for quiet contemplation, secluded seating areas, and sections designed to calm or focus the senses.
These mindful approaches to nature allow us to appreciate the beauty of the moment: the sights, the sounds, the scents, and sensations. In other words, mindfulness teaches a special type of mental focus, promoting awareness of the present and tuning out negative thoughts. This focus can improve mental health symptoms and emotional regulation, and can be practiced anywhere, including within a horticultural therapy space.7
Therapeutic Garden Activities
In addition to planning and design, it’s good to think about the therapeutic gardening activities you want inside your calming green space.
For example, therapeutic gardening activities for people with mental health issues could include:
- Structured activities
- Unstructured activities
- Guided activities
- Self-led activities (such as journaling)
Garden therapy ideas for mental health may be hands-on and practical, or more creative. For example, practical ideas include tending to the garden, such as watering plants, planting seeds or flowers, pulling up weeds, pruning, harvesting vegetables, picking fruit, or digging the earth.
Creative activities that can be done as part of horticultural therapy are flower pressing, journaling, writing poetry, or creating artwork in the garden while feeling inspired by the natural space.
The activities a therapist chooses are typically based on the needs of clients, available resources, and the goal of the activities. In horticultural therapy, as opposed to traditional gardening, the activities are also usually designed to measure people’s progress on their mental journey.
When considering activities, it may help to think about the different ways that humans connect to nature, for example:
- The senses: How people might connect to nature using the five senses (you can enhance the experience by incorporating mindfulness techniques here)
- Emotions: The different ways nature makes us feel and affects our mood, and how to reflect this in nature-based activities
- Meaning: How nature can bring meaning into our lives, evoking memories, nostalgia, or giving hope
- Compassion: Conveying to the people using the space that caring for the garden may strengthen their nurturing side, helping them be kinder to themselves and others
Design a Horticultural Therapy Space With Mission Connection
At Mission Connection, we offer horticultural therapy as part of a holistic treatment plan. We may use this type of therapy to address a range of mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Our different therapeutic options are tailored to our clients and their specific needs, availability, accessibility requirements, and lifestyle. These options include:
- Inpatient services
- Outpatient services (including intensive outpatient)
- Partial hospitalization
- Telehealth therapy
Your well-being is our priority. If horticultural therapy isn’t a good fit for you, we can work with you to find a more suitable option.
If you would like to learn more about what we do at Mission Connection or how we can help, contact one of our trained and highly experienced advisors today. Anything you tell us will be kept in the strictest confidence.
References
- Beute, F., & De Kort, Y. A. (2017). The natural context of wellbeing: Ecological momentary assessment of the influence of nature and daylight on affect and stress for individuals with depression levels varying from none to clinical. Health & Place, 49, 7–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2017.11.005
- Astell-Burt, T., Feng, X., & Kolt, G. S. (2013). Does access to neighbourhood green space promote a healthy duration of sleep? Novel findings from a cross-sectional study of 259 319 Australians. BMJ Open, 3(8), e003094. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2013-003094
- Wood, C. J., Barton, J., & Wicks, C. L. (2025). Effectiveness of social and therapeutic horticulture for reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1507354
- Sudimac, S., Sale, V., & Kühn, S. (2022). How nature nurtures: Amygdala activity decreases as the result of a one-hour walk in nature. Molecular Psychiatry, 27(11), 4446–4452. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-022-01720-6
- Hieu, T. H., Dibas, M., Dila, K. a. S., Sherif, N. A., Hashmi, M. U., Mahmoud, M., Trang, N. T. T., Abdullah, L., Nghia, T. L. B., Y, M. N., Hirayama, K., & Huy, N. T. (2019). Therapeutic efficacy and safety of chamomile for state anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, insomnia, and sleep quality: A systematic review and meta‐analysis of randomized trials and quasi‐randomized trials. Phytotherapy Research, 33(6), 1604–1615. https://doi.org/10.1002/ptr.6349
- Souter-Brown, G., Hinckson, E., & Duncan, S. (2020). Effects of a sensory garden on workplace wellbeing: A randomised control trial. Landscape and Urban Planning, 207, 103997. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2020.103997
- Keng, S., Smoski, M. J., & Robins, C. J. (2011). Effects of mindfulness on psychological health: A review of empirical studies. Clinical Psychology Review, 31(6), 1041–1056. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2011.04.006
