Use the power of nature to find peace in your own backyard and enrich your life.

A garden can be far more than a place to plant a row of zinnias or tomatoes — it can be a place of sanctuary. With the help of The Sanctuary Garden you can make your own yard or garden a place of serenity, peacefulness, and beauty. No matter how large or small your garden is, it can provide a sense of safety and comfort. And through a deep relationship with nature based on intention, reflection, and contemplation, each of us can gather strength, and our spirits may be renewed.

Ask most gardeners what gardening is and they are likely to tell you that it is primarily about plants — which ones to select, grow, propagate, and nurture. But as you will discover in this book, the seven design elements of a sanctuary garden speak less about vegetation than they do about other often overlooked considerations such as:

• Creating a special entrance that invites the visitor into a sense of sanctuary
• Effectively using water for its psychological, spiritual, and physical effects
• Creatively using color and lighting to elicit emotion, comfort, and awe in the visitor
• Creating sitting areas that enfold the visitor into the sanctuary experience by providing a place of rest for body and soul
• Highlighting natural features as anchor points, including the use of rocks, wood, natural fences, screens, trellises, wind, and sound to evoke emotion
• Integrating art that enhances the overall mood
• Providing habitat and features to attract a diversity of wildlife to share your sanctuary

Illustrated with eight radiant full-page watercolors and hand-drawn illustrations, The Sanctuary Garden: Creating a Place of Refuge in Your Yard or Garden offers a unique guide to living your life and designing your garden with purpose, contemplation, and, above all, harmony.For many gardeners, gardening is a moving meditation that brings peace and deep relaxation. At times, however, repetitive chores can feel more stressful than soothing. The authors of The Sanctuary Garden remind us that being in the garden (as opposed to active gardening) is a way to honor the intrinsic relatedness of people and plants. To help us get beyond our busyness, they identify seven key design elements that can turn a garden into a living retreat or sanctuary. A special entrance marks our departure from the mundane world. Water, the symbol of life, brings flow and reflection to the garden. The thoughtful use of color and the play of light can be contrived to deliberately evoke emotions–peace, comfort, awe, and respect. Natural features like sculptural rocks, wind song, and fragrance can become focal points for our attention. Artwork that supports the desired feelings can be integrated into our plantings. Finally, we can create attractive habitat for birds, pollinators, and animals. Sharing the garden with nature–not just plants–broadens our sense of connectedness to the natural world in a wholesome, healing way. The book creates a challenge: where is your sanctuary? Answering that may expand both your garden and your spirit. –Ann Lovejoy

The Sanctuary Garden: Creating a Place of Refuge in Your Yard or Garden