“God almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man.”
Francis Bacon, in his time, thanks to this quote had already underlined how a garden can be of such moral and physical uplift for mankind. Today, more than ever, a large amount of Spas and wellness centres keep these values close to their hearts, giving more and more importance to vegetation not only as decoration, but also to support therapeutic courses.
Modern life, due to industrialization and more recently due to the technological age has inevitably brought a fracture between man and nature. Technology allows us to surpass the natural biological times, just like architecture, that should be man's cradle, has distanced itself enough to create alien structures where man cannot recognise itself and has lost its identity. A reconciliation with nature is necessary for our well-being, a concept called Biophilia, which translates as the love for life was introduced by the biologist Edward Wilson who said that: “You cannot live a healthy and complete life away from nature, we need direct contact with life forms and the complex geometry of natural shapes just like we need oxygen and nutrition to survive”. In other words, man, for his own well-being has a biological need of affiliation with nature, for all its lush vegetation, colours, textures, sounds, models and scents. Let's focus on the colour green, nature's colour, composed by the fusion of the colour blue with yellow. It's the colour of the ego, of vitality, of hope, of vegetative life, of rest as tamed energy and it evokes the need for self-esteem and self-affirmation, it brings faith in oneself. A beautiful garden can be a source of inspiration for the senses: listening, looking, smelling, hearing, touching and even tasting can all be done effortlessly in a garden. Trees, bushes and flowers evoke our ancestral archetypes, the symbolic world that relates us to life. The simple contemplation of a flower who in its shape inspires the golden number leads us to harmony. Harmony leads to balance, an essential passage to understand how the only presence of nature as a contemplative mean can be so fundamental for an organic healthy process.
Many scientific studies have demonstrated and highlighted how even only a contact with “green” in an health context can decrease stress levels, improve moods, help them deal with pain in a better way, help with depression and speed up recovery. This yet another reason why a wellness centre should host both indoor and outdoor green spaces, allowing for them to become a necessary and qualifying element for the structure. Research and studies have shown various different paths that are interesting and strictly tie different types of plants to the human physiology finding positive correlation with plants who have an apparatus and organs. Careful planning can help this synergy with a study of the available space, its materials and its shapes as well as its floral composition.
