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Calm Landscape Design - Naturally Enhance Your Health

As Good As Grass editor:
Your surrondings can greatly influence your mood and state of mind. Promote a calm and relaxing landscape garden design to enjoy a better state of well being at home.

The landscaping and gardening season is in full swing. And if you're like 83% of all Americans, you're already enhancing your health. Creating a pleasant environment at home is an enjoyable way to wind down from day-to-day stress. With just a little added attention, your garden design can become a conscious health choice.

Your immediate physical environment - yard, garden, home, or apartment, plays an important role in your health. Most of us get it. It's almost instinctive. According to the National Gardening Association, 83% of U.S. households participated in lawn and garden projects during the past year.

Horticultural Therapy, "a process in which plants and gardening activities are used to improve the body, mind and spirits of people" (American Horticultural Therapy Association) is practiced as a treatment modality in hospitals, senior centres, rehabilitation facilities, prisons, and schools. At an informal level, its principles are put to use every day in private homes and gardens, by people of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities.

Gardening itself is health-enhancing. Yet consciously created, your landscape can provide even greater benefits. According to Elizabeth Eckert, a healthy living expert who specializes in supporting conscious healthy choices day-to-day, your immediate environment is part of the communication system that shares your likes and dislikes, your values, and your character with the world around you.

"Most importantly," explains Eckert, who has a background in developmental psychology and energy medicine, "your environment is part of the network that communicates how you value yourself to your internal protection systems - like your immune system. It becomes a metaphor for the value you place on your own health and well-being."

The guide, "Landscape With Spirit: Connecting What's Around You with How You Feel" explores three fundamental principles of holistic health and their connection with the landscape around you. The 3 principles - honor, knowledge, and attention - form the basis of a comprehensive system for healthy living.

The system is deceptively simple. "You feel as you do as a result of being well-informed about your world, and as a result of acting in accordance with what you know," Eckert continues, "And feeling is part of the sense of awareness that can literally save your life."

A full range of influences can be found in the landscape, according to Eckert's guide. Subtle factors like colour, shape, scent, caretaking, and vibration have a profound impact on how people feel. Once a person consciously identifies the energies they want in their garden, they can choose materials to enhance those qualities. For example, an area of the yard designed to be calming might feature lavender plants, both for their energy quality and their colour.

People interested in learning more about how to enhance health through their landscape and garden design may download "Landscape With Spirit". This is free of charge at http://www.LandscapeWithSpirit.com.