Show Garden Design – Wellbeing Yoga Retreat

Tell us about your garden

This design aims to convey the feeling people perceive when they go on a yoga retreat. They experience pleasure, freedom and the transformation of their mind and wellbeing.

A yoga retreat affords us the opportunity to let go of daily stresses and problems and find a balance in our minds as well as our bodies. To create this feeling, our garden has been created with simple shapes, organic materials and planting with medicinal varieties.

This garden is meant for a young couple living in London where both have a challenging work-life balance. They would find a garden heaven at home with a lush planting, secluded elements and striking features.

Water is very important in our design because it appeals to your sense of sight and sound. A living table accommodates a rill to create interest and movement. The rusty patina of the table is echoed throughout the garden by the use of corten steel, which is used to make the beds and planters.

A living frame will be installed to create a vertical element within the garden, and the planting also adds vertical accents that further emphasise the secluded areas within this green oasis.

Tell us about the planting

The planting is very dense, with lush leaves and multiple grasses to provide movement and leaf contrast. Evergreen foliage plants emphasise the rich, tropical style, offset with muted rusty tones to complement the rusty corten steel.

Contributing to this overall look are Dicksonia antarctica tree ferns and the yellow stemmed bamboo: Phyllostachys aureosulcata f. aureocaulis. These stand out well against the contemporary wooden fencing.

Euphorbia mellifera and Aspidistra further complement the scheme with their distinctive foliage. Orange tulips and the dark foliaged grass Uncinia rubra also pick up the colour of the rusted metalwork used throughout the garden.

Any other interesting features?

The decking areas have been created using Western Red Cedar, Thuja plicata, the timber for which has come from trees felled according to an environmental management plan by Arboriculture students attending Capel Manor College.

The boards were then cut by students on our mobile saw mill to create the richly coloured deck that you can see in the garden. This area provides space for practising yoga.

How is the garden educational?

The garden is used to showcase unusual plants, for example the wide selection of air plants (tillandsia) and tropical shrubs Pseudopanax ‘Trident’ and Trochodendron aralioides.

In addition to this, many plants throughout the garden have been grown for the health and wellbeing benefits that they offer to the garden owners. These include Geranium palmatum, Ferula communis, and Thymus citriodorus.

Award: Silver Medal

Capel Manor College was awarded a Silver Medal by the judges.

See our gallery of the finished gardens.

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See our photo gallery from the competition.

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