Bringing Mindfulness into Your Garden

February 11, 2025

Mindfulness is a well-regarded tool used to help bring calm to a person by focusing on being present. It’s about paying attention to what is happening right here and now, what your senses can notice and letting unwanted thoughts go. Teaching the mind to be still is hard because your mind is designed to want to think and solve problems. Being mindful helps you train your mind to be still, being truly present and improving levels of stress, anxiety and depression.

Being mindful is a practice you can do anywhere, but we love using it outside in the garden and are excited to share this with you!

Mindfulness in the Garden

There’s nothing quite like being in the garden to bring upon a sense of calm and happiness. But what if you could improve on this further? Well, you can, and it’s achieved using mindfulness. Being mindful in the garden is about slowing down, concentrating on the task at hand, being fully present in what you see, hear, feel and smell.

Here are some mindful gardening techniques to get you started:

Step into your garden and either sit or stand for a few minutes. Close your eyes; what can you hear? How many different sounds can you hear?
Walk barefoot around your garden, paying attention to what your feet are feeling. This is called grounding and can help to reduce pain and stress and improve sleep.
What smells can you identify? Spend time checking the fragrance of plants around your garden. If you are lacking in the fragrance area, you could plant a citrus tree, healing herbs or even a native Manuka tree, all of which have lovely scents.
Focus on one plant in your garden. What shapes are the leaves? Can you see the veins and leaf textures? Are there different shades of colour to see? What does the texture look like?

You can also create a mini sensory garden in a few pots or a small area within your backyard to practice mindfulness in. A sensory garden contains a wide range of scented plants such as roses, sweet peas, lilies and spring bulbs. You can also include plants with both scented and edible parts such as lavender, peppermint, rosemary, lime and lemon trees, mint and marigolds. This sounds so divine that we’re off to create our own scented garden to enhance our mindfulness time right now!