Create a Peaceful Indoor Garden is a New Year wellness retreat hosted by me and my friend, Gardyn-Doulah. This intimate four-hour experience will guide you through the process of imagining and planning a garden sanctuary inside your home.
Winter can be a difficult season to move through. The days are shorter, the cold keeps us indoors, and the outdoor gardens that once felt alive and abundant may now feel quiet, bare, or out of reach.
For many people, this season brings a longing for warmth, greenery, beauty, and a place to feel grounded. Life also brings its own stressors, and our homes do not always have a space that helps us pause, breathe, and reconnect with ourselves.
Create a Peaceful Indoor Garden is a New Year wellness retreat hosted by me and my friend Gardyn-Doulah. This intimate four-hour experience will guide you through the process of imagining and planning a garden sanctuary inside your home.
A peaceful indoor garden may not be big, but when built with intention, it can become a psychologically anchoring, grounding spot in your home. Drawing on our years of experience in gardening and healing work, this retreat will give you a practical guide and in-depth support to design an indoor garden in your home. To feel connected to growth again, you will begin creating a place where something living, green, and nourishing can be part of your winter rhythm. This retreat is also about breaking isolation, deepening connection with yourself and others through mindfulness, movement, and reflection, story-sharing, and more.
Together, we will explore the garden as both a physical space and a metaphor for the inner life.
What are you planting this year?
What needs nurturing?
What needs rest?
What kind of space would help you feel supported during the season ahead?
Through guided reflection, gentle movement, gardening education, and creative mapping, you will leave with a visual plan and practical next steps for creating your own home garden sanctuary.
This retreat is for anyone who wants to begin the year with more peace, intention, and connection to themselves, their home, and the living world.
"Gardening gives you a great opportunity to understand what actually means to be growing and existing as a human in the world. The intentional design of an indoor garden, the time you spend in your garden, is a mindful, grounding practice for your nervous system. Taking care of a plant brings out our gentleness and kindness for vulnerability, and admiration for resilience. The retreat helps you give meaning to your home garden, making it a powerful place for healing, growing, and celebrating your life. "
What You’ll Experience
This retreat will include:
Guided reflection
Gentle movement and grounding
A plant or flower-based opening activity
Visualization focused on your home sanctuary space
Creative mapping with paper, plant images, stickers, and other materials
Practical garden guidance from Gardyn-Doulah
Wellness and self-care reflection from Si Meng
Small group sharing and conversation
Tea, light snacks, and space to connect
What You’ll Receive
Participants will leave with:
A visual indoor garden map
A simple plant and care guide
A wellness practice guide
Reflection prompts to continue the process at home
Practical ideas for choosing plants, light, and location
Inspiration for creating a rhythm of tending both yourself and your plants
A deeper understanding of how a small indoor garden can support wellness and renewal
What You’ll Create
During the retreat, you will create a visual indoor garden map to use as a guide when you return home.
This may include:
Where the indoor garden will live in your home
What kind of plants or natural elements you want to include
How light, texture, scent, beauty, and care will shape the space
How you want to use the space for reflection, grounding, or daily pause
What small next steps you can take to begin creating it
You won't physically build the entire sanctuary during the retreat. Instead, you will leave with a clear visual plan, guided reflection, and concrete ideas so you can begin building the space at home.
Early Bird Price: $102 per person
Email me at simeng@vitalitytherapy.me for payment and secure your spot today!
This is a small group so space is limited, so advance registration is required.
*Bring a Friend Discount*
This retreat can be even more meaningful when shared with someone you care about.
Invite a friend, partner, or family member to attend with you. You will both receive 15% off your ticket!
About the Facilitators
Aside from my professional background (which you can learn more about on my website), I want to share a little about why I'm drawn to creating this therapeutic garden retreat with my friend Roxana.
As an only child, gardening became a kind of companion for me from an early age. Growing up, gardening was especially popular among older generations. Some of my fondest childhood memories are coming home from school and checking on the plants that the grandmas and grandpas grew in our shared public space. I loved touching the leaves and smelling the flowers, and using the petals of garden balsam (凤仙花) to dye my fingernails.
One of my earliest lessons about resilience came from a chrysanthemum plant. I remember feeling sad when its branches turned dry and brown, seemingly dead. Then, one spring, I noticed a tiny, tender green sprout emerging from those same branches. My sadness turned into excitement and wonder. Life was finding its way back.
I've had plants in my home ever since.
Last year, when I went through one of the toughest periods of my life, my balcony, filled with plants and arranged as a cozy little sanctuary, once again became a safe and nurturing place for me to slow down, reconnect with myself, and heal.
Psychotherapist, Maryland Board Approved Supervisor EFIT Certified Psychotherapist, garden lover
Si Meng
Roxana M. Segovia-Beltran.
Roxana believes that working with the land can transform individuals, families, and communities.
She has spent more than 18 years learning from gardens in different climates and settings. Her work brings together permaculture design, regenerative gardening, ecological education, mindfulness, cultural heritage, and practical support for people who want to become more confident caring for the land.
Before founding Gardyn-Doulah, Roxana worked as a birth doula and childbirth educator. That experience became the foundation for the Gardyn-Doulah approach. Just as a doula provides knowledge, encouragement, and guidance during a major life transition, a Gardyn-Doulah supports people through the process of becoming gardeners and developing a deeper relationship with their land.
Roxana's background also includes garden management, community education, environmental advocacy, and more than 20 years of instructional experience. She holds a bachelor's degree in Gender, Ethnic, and Multicultural Studies, permaculture design certification through the Reed Center, and a Professional Permaculture Certificate from Oregon State University.
Through Gardyn-Doulah, Roxana has created an organization that supports people not by taking over their gardens, but by helping them develop the understanding, skills, and confidence to grow alongside them.
Permaculture designer, educator, and longtime gardener
As a therapist, I've come to appreciate how profoundly our physical surroundings affect our emotional well-being. I believe designing a garden is also an opportunity to reflect on how we design our lives.
Even creating one intentional corner in our home can be a meaningful act of self-care. I'm also fascinated by Chinese classical gardens. They are designed not merely to be beautiful, but to invite contemplation and cultivate a particular experience of being in the world.
Through this retreat, I hope we can explore how gardening can become a practice of mindfulness, creativity, and self-discovery—and how we can intentionally create life-giving environments, both around us and within us.
I'm excited to share this experience with Roxana and everyone who joins us!