Do you need less stress in your life? Maybe ease some muscle aches? Get better sleep? Improve your circulation?
We’re guessing the answer is yes.
What if you could soak it all in right in your own backyard wellness retreat? We’ll pause while you imagine the daily rejuvenating escape.
Jump to Section
- Why Create a Backyard Wellness Retreat?
- Designing a Yard for Wellness: How to Start?
- The Best Plants for Outdoor Wellness Areas
- How to Design a Wellness Garden
- It All Starts with Expert Landscape Design
- Ready for Your Backyard Wellness Retreat? Trust Outback
What are the best wellness features for backyards? Outdoor saunas. Temperature-controlled plunge pools. Covered decks for yoga or meditation. Outdoor speakers for music to set the tone. Perfect plants for privacy and aromatherapy.
Intrigued? Keep reading. Outback Landscape designers Kim Rubert and Kirk Jeppesen share their pro insight and innovative ideas for designing a yard for wellness.
Why Create a Backyard Wellness Retreat?
Why not?
“Wellness has become a really important thing for people,” Rubert says. “These areas have become a lot more popular since Covid, when everybody was at home and couldn’t go to the gym or to the sauna. It’s definitely become more of a request.”
Add your favorite outdoor wellness features to your own backyard and let the serene rejuvenation begin.
“A huge benefit is you can share it with your family, whether it’s your kids or extended family visiting,” Rubert says. “You can use it when it’s convenient for you, maybe early morning or late at night when places are closed. You can fit it in when you can.”
Create the perfect staycation spot, Jeppesen says.
“A lot of people are deciding to enhance their own home, because their vacation is at home,” he says. “Everybody wants to step away from the hustle and bustle of life. This creates a little retreat right at home.”
Designing a Yard for Wellness: How to Start?
“You have to take functionality into consideration,” Rubert says.
She starts with a lot of questions.
How do you want to use the space? Are you a morning yoga fan? Do you want to soak in a warm hot tub then plunge into a cold pool? Dreaming of swimming laps without going to the gym? Craving a private meditation deck where nobody will ask you if you’ve seen their socks?
Once you’ve shared your goals for your outdoor wellness space, it’s time for the fun part — designing your features. There are lots of options:
Unwind in an Outdoor Sauna
Relax and detoxify in your own backyard. An outdoor sauna can be the cornerstone of a backyard wellness retreat.
Outdoor saunas create a convenient spot to soothe muscles, improve circulation, and blissfully sink into a deep sense of relaxation.
Take A Rejuvenating Plunge
Pairing a cold plunge with a steamy sauna or hot tub is an increasingly popular way to promote circulation, muscle recovery and mental clarity.
“People like to go from hot to cold, so we can include temperature controls on a plunge pool,” Rubert says. “You can also get an automatic cover for safety if you have kids or to keep leaves from blowing in.”
Name Your Outdoor Wellness Exercise
Yoga? Walking? Biking? Rubert has you covered. Literally.
“You can do a little yoga area and cover it with a pergola to protect you from the sun in the morning,” Rubert says.
“We can also do bike paths and walking paths, depending on the size of the property.”
Light Up Your Backyard Wellness Retreat
“Lighting extends the usability of your outdoor wellness area but it also creates a completely different landscape at night,” Rubert says.
Glowing path lights make a stroll to the sauna not just safer, but a bit special.
Uplights highlight trees in the landscaping, creating a magical forest kind of feel.
“We can install down lights in the trees, too, which looks like moonlight,” Rubert says.
Music Adds the Right Vibe
If your backyard wellness retreat is too quiet — or too noisy — incorporating music out there can adjust the vibe.
“Music can really set the tone in a sauna, hot tub, yoga or meditation area,” Rubert says. “Speakers are available that connect to Bluetooth and are waterproof and they’re really high quality. The music sounds great. And you can put music anywhere in the landscape, not just connected to buildings. There are bollards with speakers so you can have the sound anywhere in the landscaping you want.”
Use your outdoor music system for guided meditation, too, or even nature sounds if your own birds, bees or crickets are taking a break.
Water Features for Your Landscape Design
“Water features are visually very pretty,” Rubert says. “But there’s a lot to be said for water as a sensory sound experience, too. Water can help with stress reduction. It helps drown out other noise if you live in a busy place. It makes it feel more private.”
Water features make perfect sense when designing a yard for wellness, Jeppesen says.
“I just did a yoga patio with a great view of the Tetons, and I included a trickling water feature for a nice calming effect and to bring the outdoors a bit closer,” he says.
Blend a Smoothie at Your Nutrition Station
Does a pineapple cucumber smoothie hit the spot after your workout?
No need to head inside to the kitchen. Incorporate an outdoor nutrition station where you can keep a blender, juicer, herbal teas or a stash of fresh fruit.
“It can be as simple as a small counter with a mini fridge, a sink and outlet,” Rubert says.
The Best Plants for Outdoor Wellness Areas
Whether your backyard wellness retreat includes a sauna, a lap pool or just a serene spot to practice your yoga poses, you’ll want plenty of plants.
“You definitely want to include landscaping plants for color and texture,” Rubert says. “Plants make it feel cooler and more comfortable. They soften the hardscape. Trees are important for shade.”
Different plants serve different purposes. Tall, dense plants offer privacy, which can be key when designing a yard for wellness.
“Some of these features like saunas and hot tubs are far more private than a fire pit,” Rubert says. “You wouldn’t want to put those in a main patio hub.”
She loves using plants for privacy in landscape design.
“Nature does it best, in my opinion,” Rubert says.
North privet creates a fast-growing hedge, growing up to three feet per year.
Red Twig dogwood grows up to eight feet tall, spreads several feet wide and has pretty white flowers in the summer.
Maiden grass offers great privacy with its full, fluffy growth of 5 or 6 feet tall and 4 to 5 feet wide. This clumping grass gets a bit bigger each year, so your privacy will increase with the passing seasons.
When Jeppesen created that yoga area with the view of the Tetons, he used low-growing plants that wouldn’t obscure the stunning mountain view.
Plants add impact and reinforce the cool fact that your home wellness setup is outside. Plus, many plants smell good, which brings us to…
How to Design a Wellness Garden
Even if you don’t want an outdoor sauna or plunge pool, and you’re not a yoga fan, a simple wellness garden can offer health and serenity, Rubert says.
Ruffling your fingers through drifts of lavender, strolling past fragrant jasmine or relaxing near a planter packed with rosemary or mint can help reduce stress and just plain make you feel better.
“We can do fragrant plants for aromatherapy, or a garden where you can harvest your own vegetables,” Rubert says. “And it doesn’t have to be an actual garden. The plants can be part of the landscaping. You can include apple trees and raspberries and lavender right in the landscaping. Strawberries make a great ground cover. They fill in and spread fast.”
Jeppesen recently installed an English potager garden for a client, a mix of flowers, herbs and vegetables.
“It’s a different approach than most people do here, where they keep flowers and vegetables separate,” he says.
It All Starts with Expert Landscape Design
A backyard wellness retreat can be small, with a simple spot for morning meditation, or sprawling, with areas for swimming, biking and hot tubbing.
What are the best wellness features for backyards? That all depends on what’s perfect for you.
“That’s where it’s important to work with a designer,” Rubert says. “Every person wants something different. Some live in town homes and don’t have much space. Some live in the mountains and have all the space in the world.
”Maybe all you need is a small meditation space with a deck that’s covered,” she says.
Keep an open mind, she says.
“Here in Idaho people think you have to have grass and that’s just not the case,” Rubert says. “We can do a lot of other things besides lawn.”
Ready for Your Backyard Wellness Retreat? Trust Outback
Are you more relaxed just thinking about backyard wellness ideas?
Let’s keep the vibe going and get started.
Here at Outback Landscape, we’re experts at creating innovative, functional outdoor spaces that really enhance your life.
Outback Landscape is a full-service landscaping company offering expert landscape design in Idaho Falls. We install beautiful, functional landscapes and stay with you for the long haul, taking care of your property through all four seasons.
We serve residential and commercial properties in Idaho Falls, Rexburg, and Pocatello, Idaho, as well as the counties of Bonneville, Madison, and Bannock. Call us at 208-656-3220 or schedule a no-obligation meeting with one of our team members. We’d love to hear from you.
