What makes a garden good for us?
The Wellness Garden Project began with a deceptively simple question: How might a garden create a sense of well-being? As a lifelong design thinker, I was curious whether human-centered design could help answer it. Rather than beginning with plants, paths, seating, or shade, I began with people.
Twenty-four individuals participated in the project. Each identified current wellness goals, reflected on past garden experiences that had created an exceptional sense of well-being, and imagined what they would want more of, and less of, in a future garden experience. Then we co-created.
Using each person’s past experiences, present goals, and future aspirations, I created an eight-frame storyboard of a garden experience designed specifically for them. Participants reviewed the experience, changed what didn’t work, strengthened what did, and identified the moment that felt most meaningful.
What I discovered surprised me. Most people weren’t looking for a garden experience that improved their physical wellness. Nineteen of the 24 participants chose a mental or emotional wellness goal that they believed a garden experience could support. Only five chose a physical goal.
And their past mattered. Seventy percent recalled a family garden when describing places that had created a strong sense of well-being. It was often a garden from childhood. Others remembered public gardens, parks, and experiences immersed in nature. But those memories didn’t lead everyone to want the same kind of garden.
One person wanted the activity and connection of a community garden. Another imagined a place with soothing sounds to retreat from overstimulation. Someone else dreamed of tending an orderly vineyard. And for another, well-being meant leaving the garden behind altogether to explore the wild.
The more I listened, the clearer it became: there was no universal wellness garden. These were 24 people, with 24 histories, 24 sets of needs, and 24 different ideas of what well-being could feel like.
Our memories help reveal what well-being has meant to us. Our current goals reveal what we need now. And our aspirations help us imagine the experience that might support us next. That means designing for well-being requires more than choosing the “right” garden features. It requires listening, discovering, imagining, and designing with the person who will experience the place.
A wellness garden isn’t simply a collection of therapeutic features. It’s a relationship between a person, a place, and what that person needs from it now.
The Wellness Garden Project began with a question about gardens. It became a conversation with and about the people designing them. Many participants told me the process changed how they thought about gardens, and even about themselves. Perhaps that’s the greatest value of human-centered design. Before it helps us design better places, it helps us better understand the people those places are meant to serve.
