How you use your backyard wellness sanctuary depends on what you most need. But it doesn’t have to be hard or expensive to create an outdoor space to help you center and revitalize yourself. One way to create your own outdoor sanctuary is to create a landscape that matches your personality. 

Much of your outdoor wellness design will depend on factors not wholly in your control such as climate, site, and budget. But within your limitations, you can still personalize a space to make it highly restorative. 

Ask yourself a few questions that address the intersection of personality and outdoor design. Do walled gardens make you feel cozy? Or do you need vistas and lots of green? Are you most nurtured by the feel of earth beneath your feet? Or does low maintenance better suit your purposes? How do you feel about pattern — do you prefer intricacy or simplicity? How much do sound and scent contribute to your sense of well-being?

Look around the sanctuary you’ve already created for yourself: your home. The decorating choices you’ve made inside can tell you a lot about what your ideal outdoor wellness sanctuary should look like.

Landscape for privacy. If you are one of the lucky people surrounded by acres of land, finding a quiet outdoor space may be as simple as walking out the door. The rest of us probably will need some sort of screening. What you choose depends on the available area, your budget, your timeline and your aesthetic.

My sort-of-new next door neighbor, for example, recently reconfigured her property with a bunch of wooden fences topped with graceful curves. The effect is sensational. She has shielded the back of her yard from an unsightly view, created absolute privacy where none existed before, and made her property look a lot bigger.

I’m a hedge person. I want privacy without walls, and I’ve been willing to put up with the downsides of living screens to get it. A built fence is compact and creates instant, low-maintenance screening. My shrubs and trees take up space, need time to grow, and require TLC, but they provide color, texture and above all, a seamless connection with nature.

There are plenty of choices in between these two extremes. Portable screens work well for balconies and other small spaces. Curtains can help enclose porches and pergolas and can impart a fluid airy feeling solid fences cannot. Living screens can be as simple and fast growing as vines winding on a lattice or potted plants and vertical gardens set along a wall. 

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Connect with nature. As anyone who’s studied yoga or tai chi outdoors will tell you, there’s something special about practicing while making direct contact with the earth. But you don’t have to have a practice to enjoy these benefits in your outdoor wellness sanctuary. Nor do you have to have a water-guzzling high maintenance lawn. 

Creeping thyme, a relative of the culinary herb, is one of the best drought-tolerant ground covers around. Its dense sponge-y mat of blue-green leaves stands up to foot traffic, flowers in the spring, attracts butterflies and smells great when you walk on it.

If you’re more of a patio sort of person, you can plant fragrant thyme between the pavers. Sweet-smelling flowering plants in pots or beds can also engage the senses. These include drought-resistant mainstays such as lavender or Russian sage. If you’re a cook, culinary herbs such as basil and drought-tolerant rosemary can make great additions to your outdoor sanctuary. (Non-gardening types can use outdoor scent diffusers.)

Of course, colorful greenery for its own sake — such as drought-tolerant lantana, coneflower or yarrow — can also enhance the sense of sanctuary and calm. 

Add Furniture, Equipment, and Hardscapes. Your choice of seating in your outdoor wellness sanctuary will be highly personal. Zafus are great for both meditation and for sitting around with like-minded friends. Ditto all-weather floor cushions. If opting for conventional seating, two main principles apply: Keep it simple, and keep it comfortable. You want an uncluttered look that encourages serenity and makes room for body, spirit, and mind to expand.

If you do yoga or tai chi as part of your wellness practice, you’ll need a cleared flat space outdoors to do your work and, with yoga, a mat and maybe a prop or two.

You might also want to enhance an outdoor sanctuary with sound. You don’t have to build a waterfall to benefit from the soothing sound of falling water. Small portable fountains that can operate indoors or out may be all you need. Or perhaps, a bubbler in a birdbath, which also has the advantage of attracting birds and birdsong.

In the absence of water, there are always wind chimes. They’ve been used for centuries to enhance a sense of well-being. They also can serve a practical purpose, correcting the harsh sounds of the modern world with their gentle sound and enveloping you with the sense of safety and calm that is the very essence of wellness and sanctuary.

Frances Black is a writer and gardener. She was born in Michigan and has planted gardens everywhere she's lived, from New Mexico to New England.