What Is a Wellness Garden? A Beginner’s Guide to Creating a Space That Heals
Gardens have long been a source of peace, beauty, and restoration. Study after study confirms what many of us already feel intuitively: gardening supports physical health, reduces stress, and promotes emotional wellbeing.
But a wellness garden goes one step further.
A Wellness Garden Begins with Intention
Unlike traditional vegetable plots or neatly trimmed culinary herb beds, a wellness garden is rooted in purpose. It’s not just about what looks good or even what tastes good—it’s about what heals. These gardens are thoughtfully designed to support your emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing through the use of medicinal plants, and through a deep relationship with the land you tend.
A true wellness garden:
Prioritizes herbs and plants known for their healing properties
Embraces permaculture principles, enhancing the natural ecosystem around it
Invites in wildlife, pollinators, and beneficial insects
Grows food, medicine, and beauty in one integrated space
You’re not just gardening—you’re building a living apothecary. This act, in and of itself, becomes a quiet resistance to the chaos and hustle of modern life.
Why I Teach Wellness Gardening
As a trained herbalist and lifelong plant person, I’ve spent countless hours learning from the land. Long before my formal training, I was pruning shrubs and spreading mulch alongside my dad, who worked as a landscaper and taught me that tending the earth is also a way of caring for ourselves.
My approach to wellness gardening blends that practical foundation with the deeper, spiritual and ecological teachings that have shaped my work. Here’s why this practice matters—especially now:
Resilience: In times of instability—economic, systemic, ecological—knowing how to grow and use healing plants brings peace of mind. It’s a form of preparation that’s rooted in care.
Empowerment: Reconnecting to the land builds confidence. With every plant you nurture and every remedy you make, you remember: you are capable, and nature wants to support you.
Healing: Medicinal plants offer gentle, effective support for many of the physical and emotional ailments modern life throws at us. These aren’t just pretty flowers—they’re allies in our return to balance.
What Makes Up a Wellness Garden?
There’s no one-size-fits-all layout for a healing garden. But there are a few key principles that guide every one I help design:
Plant Selection: Center the Medicinal
Choose plants that do more than look good—choose ones that offer real benefit. That might mean herbs for calming the nervous system (like lemon balm or chamomile), pollinator-friendly flowers that support biodiversity, or evergreens (like oregon grape) that remind you to stay rooted in all seasons.
Many culinary herbs, like thyme, rosemary, and sage, are also deeply medicinal—supporting immunity, digestion, and overall vitality.
Layout: Work with What You’ve Got
Wellness gardens aren’t showpieces—they’re collaborative spaces. The goal is to design a garden that thrives in your specific conditions: your light, your soil, your microclimate. This often means planting in creative pockets, blending form with function, and allowing the space to evolve over time.
Honor the Ecosystem
A wellness garden acknowledges that we’re not the only ones who live here. We honor the bees, birds, insects, and unseen life in the soil. You’re not creating something to control—you’re partnering with what already wants to grow.
Embody the Wild
This isn’t about perfection. A true healing garden isn’t manicured—it’s alive. You’re co-creating with the wildness of nature, allowing it to shape the space as much as you do. And when you allow that dance to unfold, the result is abundance.
A Living, Breathing Ecosystem
At its core, a wellness garden is about building something that can sustain itself over time. That’s the beauty of ecosystem gardening—when you select companion plants, respect natural rhythms, and show up with care, your garden becomes a resilient, self-sustaining source of healing.
Yes, it requires effort—watering, watching, learning—but what you receive in return is so much more than flowers or food. You receive connection. Confidence. A sense of being held.
Ready to begin growing your own healing garden?
Download the Wellness Garden Starter Guide to start designing a space that nourishes you and connects you more deeply to the land.