I know that for me being in Nature has restorative effects, the joy of walking through a forest feeling protected by the trees above brings me a real sense of calm.
We can create this same feeling within our homes.
By placing more Natural materials inside our homes, we are replicating Nature which in turn can have amazing effects on our health & Wellbeing. Over the past few years I have been bringing more of Nature inside - fallen branches, pine cones, conkers, stones. To begin with my family thought I was mad as I crammed a twisted branch into the car. It was partially hanging out of the window and poking me in the eye - but I was determined. Our children are forever collecting sticks and wanting to bring them home, now it's my turn! This fallen branch had caught my eye on a walk and I knew it would look amazing hanging above our dining table. It is so simple - yet it feels so grounding.
Plants and dried flowers are another great way of bringing nature indoors. I have been teaching myself how to care for indoor plants, some more successfully than others! It started with Matt saying he would like to have more plants around the house so I bought him an Areca palm for his Birthday, then he bought me plants for my birthday & it has now become a tradition. We have noticed that we really enjoy being surrounded by plants, they have a huge calming effect on us, we love bunching them all together to create a jungle feel.
Flowers are my absolute favourite thing to bring indoors, you can buy dried flowers but I have really enjoyed doing the process myself. The benefit of dried flowers is they last a long time, their colours tend to mute & they have this vintage feel that I adore. I started by simply hanging flowers upside down to see which ones would dry well. I get giddy with excitement when someone gifts me flowers with woody stems as I now know these dry particularly well.
I'm sharing examples of how we love to design our space with tactile objects but for you it could simply be using earthy, natural paint colours, hanging nature inspired Artwork or using a floral wallpaper. From experience I know even the smallest changes to your space can have a huge impact on your mental health. Nature is healing. We can't be outside all the time so by connecting with nature in our homes we can create a space which feels more balanced and grounding.
I believe our homes should reflect nature as much as possible after all nature does not go out of fashion; she is consistently beautiful.
Claire
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