The Meditation Garden

The quiet of a meditation garden can be easily achieved with a few key elements. There’s nothing like taking a few moments of quiet in your garden...

Wabi Basin
Item # 99791 		Wabi Basin

Each $135.00
  • Topic: Garden Design
  • Author: Cindy Bellinger
  • Keywords: solace, meditation, specialized plants, structures, Garden Design, gardens
  • Date: February 2003

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“If you love truth, be a lover of silence.”—Thomas Merton

There’s nothing like taking a few moments (or a whole afternoon) of quiet in your garden. Whether your favorite spot is a chaise lounge or a hammock, the solace of being outdoors in a relaxing setting is what summers are all about. And believe it or not, those summer days are just around the bend.

Wanting to make a few changes in the garden this year—to make it a touch more soothing—I called a landscape designer friend about the specifics of a meditation garden. I hung up feeling a little discomfited. Hardly anything in my garden even comes close to what he’d outlined. I’d have to make some big changes.

Yet at the same time my garden is where I go for solitude and to think quietly. So just what does qualify a garden to be a meditative place?

According to Peg Streep, the author of “Spiritual Gardening” (which we have in our bookstore), it is a place of retreat, no matter how that is defined and even if it’s a spot to gaze on from inside the house. Within the context of retreat, privacy becomes the first criteria. It’s a little hard to find seclusion when streets, sidewalks and neighbors are within view or even a little too close. So this is where fences server their purpose. If you need to put one in, make it something you won’t mind looking at—a coyote fence, a hedge or even woven wire that you can train some Virginia Creeper or other vines to climb.

Within the confines of this privacy the meditation garden has the soft sounds of water or the tinkling of wind chimes, something soothing to the ear. Then winding paths and curved planting beds serve the same softening effect but for the eye. The sense of smell can be touched with certain aromatic plants. Think of sitting in your garden in the new spring among blooming lilacs. Wonderful.

Streep likes working with symbols in a garden setting and suggests the permanence of rocks “to signify the grounded nature of larger truths.” In another book, “Urban Sanctuaries” by Stephen Anderton (which we also carry), examples are given for creating minimalist gardens, where very little is installed that could distract the meditator. On smooth surfaces—raked sand, bricked spaces, even painted concrete slabs—one large vase or statue might be placed. Or only a few potted plants grouped together.

Anderton says that even one portion of a garden can be a minimalist space. “They work as a contrast to the airier but equally well-defined spaces of the garden itself,” he writes.

And, of course, a place to sit is imperative in a meditation garden. It’s hard to really be quiet standing unless, of course, you create a labyrinth of paths for walking meditation. In my own garden, I have two spots for sitting—an old metal chair and then a thick slab of wood supported between two stacks of bricks. One is for full sun in the morning, the other for deep shade on hot afternoons. Then again, I find myself sitting on the stone planters because sometimes I like to really be in the garden. And I hang the hammock out back between two trees and this is just fine even though it’s not a garden in the true sense.

Another book in our store titled, “The Garden Sanctuary” by Keith Mitchell goes into some items associated with contemplative gardens, items such as mandalas, stone altars, Celtic plaques, sculptures, and archetypal symbols you can hang from branches.

There is no definitive guide for creating a meditation garden; and though my own favored sitting spot outdoors wouldn’t be featured in any of these lush books, it’s still a place where I can pull back from the world. And that’s what a meditation garden is all about.