I`ve dreamed of a Japanese-style Wabi-Sabi garden a long time. The kind of garden where every weed does not need to be plucked, but life is allowed to conquer in its own way and with sprawls and where you can find wonderful shady places and interesting vegetation. In autumn, when the leaves drip, they are allowed to stay on the ground and the cycle of life is visible in different ways.

My dream garden is green and natural, not colorful. The traditional Japanese garden is of course very well maintained and carefully composed, but the prevailing idea is naturalness. The water element is also a key part of a Japanese garden which is again the only one that doesn’t particularly fascinate me for some reason. I have never liked that much a colorful flower garden, but what fascinates me especially, is precisely the combination of green scenery, stone and neutral colors.

The Wabi-Sabi philosophy is where imperfect represents perfection, permanence and respect for nature and life… natural beauty. It is all in harmony with what my soul is thirsting for. 

Last summer, I started to work this dream for the area in front of our outdoor sauna cottage. The idea was to make that area a combination of Japanese style Wabi-Sabi garden and nordic forest, as the sauna building is located on the edge of the plot surrounded by forest.

I planted a couple of alpine roses and a white rose bush and got from my mother`s garden a couple of other shrub. Alpine roses grow nicely in the middle of a lingonberry 🙂 I also decorated the area with a lot of natural stones.

 

I love living in the middle of beautiful nature and I want to have a lovely yard, but I am not that typical garden person who would spend all summer doing this. So I definitely demand easy care from my garden.

But life changes and now, this summer new winds blew for our family. We’ve actually lived most of the summer in our “summer apartment” located in the man’s workplace. We own a farm that includes my husband’s company premises and several residential buildings.

In the spring, we made the decision to put our home up for sale and set out to move towards new dreams. While this decision was not easy it serves our dreams and family needs. I believe in courage and the courage to  go forward in life and go after your dreams and take risks. We wanted to move closer to a man’s work. Our farm has 2 old log houses from the early 20th century. Our plans are to renovate a lovely home from one of the farm buildings. In fact, we dreamed of this change as early as 5 years ago before we ended up buying our current home, but then the farm’s properties were still largely rented out and we longed for our own peace. At the turn of last year, the lease expired and so here we are now.

This summer has been different, but in a good way. So, for my future home I will be sure to design a wabi-sabi garden too, but I will have to start all over. In the meantime, I dream and design in my mind and heart and collect images and ideas on Pinterest.