Crafting an urban oasis may be challenging, but you can create your relaxing haven with some helpful advice. Begin with growing herbs and leafy greens before moving on to fruiting trees like fig, lemon, or citrus varieties.
New Orleans deaconess Phyliss Jackson-Polk was delighted to learn she’d won HGTV’s 2023 Urban Oasis home, an exquisite 2023 Mercedes-Benz, and $50,000 from sweepstakes sponsor Viva!
Gardening Blogs
Garden spaces can be great places for relaxing and socializing with family and friends. They help reduce stress levels and improve air quality in cities. Gardens also provide an escape from urban living!
Design is one of the cornerstones of garden ownership. A well-planned layout can make a space feel welcoming and increase its value. However, designing one may prove challenging for newcomers, and there are numerous resources online available to assist in crafting the ideal space.
These blogs can provide abundant knowledge and guidance, covering subjects as diverse as gardening techniques, landscape design, and plant care. Furthermore, some blogs offer tips to make your garden more eco-friendly by helping reduce water usage while increasing organic material use.
Some of the best gardening blogs are written by passionate individuals who genuinely love their work. For instance, Garden Therapy author Amanda has used her blog to encourage others to get out and enjoy nature more fully despite suffering a debilitating illness that kept her bedridden for years – slowly venturing into her yard after reading books, experiencing failure, and reading gardening blogs.
The Horticult is another viral gardening blog that provides helpful hints and strategies for growing food in small spaces. From building trellises from recycled materials to attaching vegetable-growing bins to closet organizers, The Horticult provides everything needed for success—even how-to instructions for innovative containers such as fabric Smart Pots or gutter gardens that can be attached directly onto roofs for herbs and veggies!
Urban Oasis seeks to be an inclusive non-profit organization, welcoming anyone who supports its mission. This means it welcomes individuals of all religions, sexual orientations, economic statuses, and ages and explores gardening/farming philosophies that do not harm the environment.
Indoor Gardening
Gardening not only brings the joy of cultivating one’s own produce and flowers, but it can also provide many other advantages. Gardening provides excellent stress relief while simultaneously being an engaging hobby – the variety of plants that can be grown indoors makes even novice gardeners successful at self-sufficiency!
No matter the space, lush greenery instantly brightens it up. Even an otherwise plain ledge in direct sunlight can become home to an array of plants when placed strategically—such as windowsills and ledges in kitchens, dining rooms, bathrooms, and living areas where there’s plenty of natural sunlight available for cultivating an indoor garden.
Home gardens add aesthetic value and can be the focal point for relaxing or social gathering spaces. While a backyard may be out of reach for many apartment dwellers and condo owners, small patios can still become peaceful retreats with proper planning and selection of planters, seating, and decor. This transforms any urban oasis into tranquil spaces for restorative respite or entertaining gatherings.
Indoor gardens offer the unique benefit of providing access to edible plants despite limited space or containers. Begin with herbs like basil and parsley before moving on to leafy greens or vegetables suitable for small pots. With enough space, dwarf fruit trees may add beauty and bounty to your indoor garden!
Container Gardening
Urban oasis gardens or green spaces provide people with an oasis of nature to unwind from city life, relax their minds, and appreciate nature’s beauty. Such spaces can be found worldwide, significantly improving air quality by reducing pollutants in local air quality systems.
At its core, an urban oasis can be created through several strategies; however, one key step to its success and relaxation should be selecting plants that thrive in your specific environment. This will ensure your oasis becomes an enjoyable space to unwind in.
Attractively design your oasis with different plants of various textures to give the space some dimension and variety, or add features like water features and lighting for maximum visual impact. Another way to add interest is by using color. Bright hues create an exciting ambiance, while more muted tones may offer relaxation.
One of the easiest and most rewarding ways to create an urban oasis is to plant a garden. This can be done in small spaces such as balconies or fire escapes or, more ambitiously, on larger spaces like yards or rooftops. Gardening can be exciting and rewarding—remember to care for your plants properly!
Another way to create an urban oasis is to plant trees and shrubs. This can increase shade in your garden, providing relief from the heat of the day. Furthermore, selecting native species for your region will reduce irrigation needs considerably.
Even without much space, growing plants in containers is still a simple way to create an urban oasis. Simply top-dressing the containers with gravel, crushed shells, or decorative materials can make them more attractive while helping retain moisture levels in your planter. For plants to flourish fully within their containers, use only pot-specific potting mixes; adding time-release fertilizers may also provide enough nourishment over an extended period.
Dwarf Fruit Trees
An urban oasis is a small area of greenery in the middle of a city that provides relief from modern life, helping its residents unwind and relax. These areas also provide physical activities like gardening or walking that improve air quality for healthier breathing and reduce stress and blood pressure. These oasis spots can be found across cultures and come in all sizes—Central Park can be one such oasis, or it could even be as small as Los Angeles Central Library’s plaza!
An urban oasis’ main benefit lies in its positive environmental impact. Urban oases help mitigate climate change by decreasing water use and fossil fuel consumption, increasing biodiversity, which in turn helps combat erosion and soil degradation, and decreasing air pollution by filtering harmful chemicals out of the atmosphere. They may even have positive implications for local economies, with studies demonstrating an impactful rise in land values around nearby neighborhoods.
Urban oases offer environmental advantages as well as health and social advantages. They can reduce thermal stress for vulnerable groups such as homeless individuals or those commuting for extended periods. Furthermore, urban oases improve social interactions and decrease loneliness while simultaneously improving mental well-being by helping people feel more connected to nature.
Urban oases differ from natural parks in that their care falls to individual citizens rather than government employees. This creates both personal and ecological benefits that are worth investing time in. Oases provide an oasis from everyday stress while offering exercise opportunities and teaching new skills.
New gardeners may feel intimidated by the prospect of planting a tree, but with careful consideration, it can become part of your urban oasis in your backyard or balcony. Select fruit trees suitable to your climate and space conditions: dwarf fruit trees usually mature rapidly and reach maturity within several years while being self-fertile (requiring no pollinator to pollinate them).