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The spa garden is devoted to relaxation and entertainment. It is a place to enjoy a range of pleasing and health-giving treatments within a soothing garden framework that can be tailored to suit all tastes and climates.
With vigilant planning, you can successfully create a blend between the practical and the decorative.
The spa courtyard can be crafted and enjoyed anytime - a night-time dip in the bubbling warmth of a hot tub, or a post-sauna cold plunge in shade when the temperature is high during the day.
This congenial-style encourages family, friends and neighbours to drop by, enjoy a spa, chat and unwind. And, since planting can be kept to a minimum, it requires little maintenance.
Treatments like sauna, steam room, hot tub, cold plunge pool and shower dominate the spa courtyard, but it is also a garden. Thus, your design needs to be multi-purpose: decide on the treatments you want to enjoy and on the style of your garden within which you wish to position them. This offers great liberty of choice, as spa treatments will meld simply with many garden styles.
For a Scandinavian garden atmosphere, your garden can have white painted walls, wooden decking floors, sheltered corners and architectural planting will merge to create a traditional feel.
For a Japanese flavour, clad the walls with bamboo screens and create a small Zen rock and gravel garden. For a contemporary ambience, dyed concrete floors, mirrors on walls and stainless steel planters make an impact; and if you want a more informal, floral garden, simply locate the treatment centers among flowerbeds and lawn.
However, to lessen the amount of dirt getting into the various treatment centres, avoid the necessity of strolling on loose ground by covering materials such as gravel, bark or sand.
Once you have made up your mind on treatments and style, the next step is to combine the two elements.
Practically, the treatment centres should be easily accessible from the house and from each other. However, rather than being crowded together, they should be placed in such a way that there are usable spaces between them. These spaces then serve as home to the screened off, secluded areas for sitting and cooling off, open areas for entertaining, the beds\borders and a few ornamental garden features.
As the courtyard will be used during the night-time as well, the final task is to position the lights for easy movement around the garden as well as for dramatic effect. To enjoy utmost relaxation and nominal maintenance, use assorted planting of shrubs, herbaceous varieties and bulbs.
