7 Steps For Creating A Relaxing Minimalist Garden

A minimalist garden uses a limited number of design elements. It presents a simple and uncluttered elegant, relaxing appearance. It is an excellent gardening style for seniors or people who have a very busy lifestyle and prefer a minimalist home.

Its creation is enjoyable and its upkeep is, quite simply put, minimal. In this article, we will discuss some smart tips that will help you create your own oasis with a minimalist garden landscaping design of peace and calm. Read on to learn more about this mid-century modern garden setting.

front yard Minimalist GardenPin
Minimalist Garden with a contemporary look

#1 – Create A Minimal Foundation With Well Planned Hardscaping

Hardscape is all the rage in gardening minimalism. For a clean, uncluttered, low or no maintenance look to paving materials for the answer. Rocks, gravel and paving stones used in the place of plants or accented by a few tough xeriscaping type plants can create a stunning beautiful garden setting in minimalist style.

Xeriscaping and minimalism go hand-in-hand. Look for interesting, attractive drought-tolerant plants to add color and form to your hardscaped yard.


Choosing plants native to your area as these plants naturally thrive in your setting and provide food and shelter for desirable fauna and flowers attracting butterflies and birds. Some garden owners choose flowerless plants for lesser color and background.

#2 – Create An Outdoor Space With Privacy

While generally speaking with a minimalist approach you probably do not want hedges and shrubs throughout your garden design, you may wish to create a barrier around the perimeter. Carefully clipped hedges can provide privacy and peace in your garden.

For consistency, evergreens make an excellent hedge and as individual plantings throughout. This choice results in a garden that remains consistent and fairly unchanging throughout the year. If this is what you want, then carefully chosen evergreen plants are the way to go.

Of course, you must carefully weigh whether or not you want to spend the time and maintenance a hedge would demand. A garden wall may serve the purpose better. You may very well decide to have an actual fence or wall surrounding your garden.

#3 – Define Your Space

With a larger yard, you can set off sections for specific purposes. Use rock or brick fences, walls and borders to delineate the separate areas of your yard. Choose materials that blend or contrast with your hardscape ground covering.

With this type of layout, use different spaces in your garden for distinct and different purposes. For example, you might set up a horticultural area for a very chic veggie garden.

In another area you might plant one or two fruit trees for a very artistic orchard. A water feature, pond, fountain or pool in another section can be a real drawing point even in a small space.

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#4 – Keep Design Ideas Focused On Simplicity

Of course, it is easy go overboard with this sort of design idea and soon stray out of minimalism! Be sure to stay focused and don’t allow the designs of your minimalist garden to become kitschy and cluttered.

The key to good minimalism design is to create simple, clean lines free of clutter. You want a sweeping, open look that is soothing to the eye. Check out this transformation to a simply Japanese garden.

Begin by using mostly neutral tones. You may offset with a spot of color here and there as a focal point either with your plantings or with different colors and textures in rock judiciously chosen.



This simple, neutral minimalist backdrop is ideal to highlight different types of minimalist plants in different seasons.

#5 – Use Container Planting To Bring Interest To Minimalist Gardens

Another good way to bring a little bit of variety and interest to your minimalist hardscape is with container plantings.

When you couple container gardening with your minimalist landscape design, it gives you a great deal of flexibility with a color palette to change the look from one year to the next or even seasonally.

The containers themselves can introduce color and design. Use of container gardening gives you a lot of variety in the type of vegetation you can introduce. If you wish, add more lush vegetation or even edible fruits and veggies.

#6 – Raised Beds Define Space And Provide Planting Areas

Another good choice for planting in this type of setting is raised bed gardening. Create a minimalist garden using a very attractive, simple raised bed gardens using brick or stone as borders.

A raised bed garden is the perfect setting for appealing scented herbs to bring joy to both your garden setting and your kitchen.

#7 – Water Brings Peace To You & Life To Your Garden

A water feature such as a simple pool or fountain with a trickling waterfall can be remarkably relaxing in a small garden. The key to a successful minimalist water feature is to be sure all of the workings are well hidden. Disappearing fountains like this make for an excellent choice.

You don’t want to see tubing, pond liner or pumps on display. Everything should appear natural, streamlined, clean and simple. A sparkling water feature is a delight to the eye and an attraction for birds, butterflies and dragonflies.

Keep Minimalist Gardens Simple

It’s easy to see how the term “minimalism” can be very open to interpretation. Basically put, a minimalist garden is one simply laid out and requiring little or no care.

Even so, it should not be a barren concrete slab. To create a minimalist garden, a designers goal should be to create a a peaceful, enjoyable, attractive setting requiring easy care.

While it may seem to the eye minimalist gardening is very simple and easy, many experts say it is the most difficult style of gardening.

The temptation to throw in lots of different colors, textures and elements is very strong for nonprofessionals. The main thing to keep in mind when creating a successful minimalist garden – less is more.

Additionally, the amount of time you want to spend gardening should be a major deciding factor in the decisions you make about your garden.

Think carefully before choosing plants and other elements so you can create a space to perfectly suit your aesthetic taste and your actual physical abilities and availability of time.

In its purest sense, minimalism provides a way of finding your true self by sweeping away the unnecessary and making conscious choices about the things you wish to embrace.

We live in a society that encourages us to collect and amass. The goal of minimalist garden design is to buck this system and free your soul.

H/T: houzz