Life in Landscape Series Part 1. – Gardens Loaded With Aroma

Get refuge in your own sanctuary garden in your back yard. Even Sedona properties with small areas can have magnificent gardens packed with scents that fill the air. Aromatherapy comes from the earth and including sweet-smelling plants to your garden can sweeten your surroundings when spending time in your outdoors. Different fragrances can stimulate different emotions or moods when translated by our olfactory glands. It’s amazing how powerful the sense of smell is.

Your sense of smell is your most primitive sense and applies astonishing influence over your thoughts, feelings, moods, memories, and actions. Scents are experienced long before words. This is the reason why it’s virtually impossible to explain them using language. Olfaction is different from your other senses, processed via different paths in your brain.

For other types of experiences like sounds and visual images, sensory data is brought directly to your thalamus, which you could think of as “the big switchboard” in your brain. From there, information proceeds out to your main sensory cortices.

But smells are not the same. Just before coming to your thalamus, they first wind their way through other locations of your brain, including areas controlling memory and feelings. So with aromas, you have all this additional processing even before you have conscious awareness of the scent. 

Due to this, aromas can have a powerful influence over the way you think, feel, and act. Aromatherapy permits you to harness the olfactory power of plants for healing, or merely to boost your state of well-being.

Back to the Garden!

Nothing trumps walking past a bush of blooming roses that just exude with aroma, you feel fresh and new and want to stay in their fragrant cloud.

scents induce the part of the human brain that influences emotion. The form of an essential oil molecule is like a key that unlocks lock-like structure in the olfactory nerve receptors in our nostrils. The perception of the smell is sent specifically and immediately to the limbic system where memories are held and gratification and emotions are perceived. When activated, the limbic system discharges chemicals that affect the central nervous system. Serotonin counteracts anxiousness and endorphins reduce pain.

A few reliable examples of fragrant plants for the garden consist of Arizona Rosewood (Vauquelinia californica) and Spanish & English lavender!
Rose – Rose has the greatest vibration of any other scent individuals are able to encounter. Just one sniff of rose scent and you will certainly feel invigorated and vivacious. A cell rejuvenator and powerful antiseptic, rose essential oil calms and cures skin ailments, including cuts and burns. Rose remedies asthma and may be used as an inhalant, albeit a costly one.

Spanish Lavender (Lavandula Stoechas)and English Lavender (Lavandula Angustifolia) – Lavender is a holistic anti-anxiety treatment. Lavender’s impact on the mind is amazing – it is both revitalizing and calming. A little bit of Lavender may be placeded on the pillow or sprayed on the sheets to stimulate a relaxed rest, and it is also immensely helpful in diminishing headaches. Including lavender to your garden a good means to invigorate the sense of smell. Rosemary, Eucalyptus, and Lemon pair very well with lavender.

Various other great plants to heighten the aroma of your sanctuary garden in the Sedona, Arizona area are:

• Cleveland Sage
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Almond Verbena
• Star Jasmine
• Wisteria
• Honeysuckle
• Mount Lemmon Marigold

Next time you are thinking about exactly what to plant in your garden to create a much more peaceful and meditative area for you and your family, definitely take into account growing plants and flowers that will fill the atmosphere and encourage your sense of smell.