The Hidden Magic of Biophilic Garden Design

When designing, it's easy to either overthink things and stick too closely to certain patterns and arrangements, or, on the other hand, follow no logic or principal at all. Biophilic Garden Design helps us find the perfect balance between chaos and order.

What Is Biophilic Garden Design?

Let me explain:

Imagine that we want to design a park formed by hundreds of trees that will be planted in the landscape. How do we arrange them? Well, here is where 'biophilic' design, AKA design inspired by God, comes in.

Finding inspiration in Nature, Reality, The Universe is what I call Biophilic Garden Design.

For the park example, I would look in Nature for patterns or arrangements of the same number or quality. For example, I could look at the placement of stars in a certain constellation in the sky, and copy this arrangement with my trees.

Cassiopea constellation chart. Source: www.iau.org

Or I could find inspiration in the way moles are arranged on someone's skin:

Or follow the pattern that apples create when gathered on the ground under a tree:

The possibilities are infinite. We want to co-create with God: we come up with an idea and allow the Universe to show us how to bring it forth.

Biophilic Garden Design and The Golden Ratio

This idea of following natural order is intimately connected to the Golden Ratio or the Fibonacci sequence.

The distribution of so many things in Nature is built on a two- and three-dimensional sequence that follows the formula:

By uncovering this secret ratio, we have been able to decode the rule, the number, the sequence that God uses to create.

And yes, we can harness the power of this sequence too.

One of the problems we might face is a lack of understanding and faith. Somehow we have to trust that by using this pattern and copying nature in our designs we will come up with ingenius solutions. And believe me, it happens.

Here are some examples of Biophilic Garden Design at work. Do any of these look familiar?

I use these principles when I'm creating my gardens. Sometimes I use the Fibonacci Spiral to arrange the paths within the space, for example:

In the project called the Spiral River I used the golden ratio to create the spiral paths and rivers that flow to the center of the space.

Somehow I know I can trust that this is the most beautiful and perhaps the most efficient way of arranging them.