Gardens have always been renowned for their healing power, but a new wellness movement is ramping things up. Enter the spa garden, or “sparden” — a growing trend for turning your backyard into a full-blown mini retreat.
At the forefront of this is the garden sauna. Chris Selman spent a year travelling the world researching them (“my friends hated me,” he laughs) before co-founding bespoke home sauna company Out of the Valley. Domestic saunas are commonplace in Scandinavia, Finland and the Baltic states, but Selman says they’re now taking off here, thanks to a growing awareness of their benefits, from stress relief and detoxification to cardiovascular health.
“I think the sauna is where yoga was 20 years ago,” Selman says. He has seen rocketing demand in the past year, with urban inquiries, predominantly in London, increasing fourfold. At the end of last year the company launched the Tyto, a compact city-friendly model recently installed in a Notting Hill garden.
I don’t think this is a quick trend, just the modern rebirth of Greek and Roman bathhouses
Private outdoor ice baths are also increasingly popular (Holly Willoughby, Jodie Kidd and Professor Green all have one), with Brass Monkey founder Danyl Bosomworth noting the number of companies like his selling them in the UK has doubled year on year. “I don’t think this is a quick trend either, just the modern rebirth of a very old idea from Greek and Roman bathhouses 2,000 years ago,” he says.
“It’s lovely going to a spa, but the luxury of having your own retreat at home is wonderful,” says Thaisa Box, founder of home sauna company Wildhut, who believes the garden spa trend began in the pandemic when people were spending more time at home thinking about their health. The “fifth room” trend — seeing your garden as an extension of your home — also took off around this time.
Paul Ransom, founder of Into The Garden Room, installs bespoke garden spas and saunas in and around south-west London. He says inquiries have more than tripled. “Some people are spending serious amounts of money on their gardens now,” he adds, saying the baseline cost for a properly built garden sauna is about £50,000. Recently he designed and installed a sauna, gym/dance studio and wet room in a Richmond garden for £175,000, but even that is small change compared to one lavish garden spa in Hampstead in a project by interior design studio Black & Milk, which cost £1million.
The challenge is making sure wellness areas feel part of the garden rather than just ‘dropped in’
While most Londoners don’t have that sort of money, Selman believes the spa garden trend reflects the way millennials, in particular, are making health and wellness a priority. Garden designer Jo Thompson has also noticed a rise in the number of clients asking for spa-type features to be integrated into landscaping. “More and more, we’re being asked to include wellness areas, specifically saunas and plunge pools,” she says, although the challenge is making sure they feel part of the garden rather than just “dropped in”. In one Hampstead project, Thompson created “a heavily planted winding path up to a secret little oasis with sauna and pool that from the outside looked like another garden area,” she says.
It’s heaven showering outside. It feels more connected and less cut off
Few London gardens have space for a pool, but outdoor baths and showers are increasingly popular as a classier alternative to the hot tub. Garden designer Will Wareing installed a copper shower outside the south London home he shares with his wife and children. “We didn’t want to close off the side return so it became an open-air conservatory and shower room,” he says. “It’s basically heaven showering outside. There’s the air temperature, the sky, the little spiders hanging out — it feels more connected and less cut off.” London-based influencer and micro-developer Sara Mungeam also added a shower to her back garden: “It was my husband’s only wishlist item, he loves using it after coming back from a run,” she says.
Joanna Wakelin, of bath specialist William Holland, says more customers are ordering copper tubs for outdoor use — perhaps inspired by the number of holiday homes and boutique hotels which have outdoor baths. Pure copper works well outside, says Wakelin, as it holds heat for longer and is antimicrobial so doesn’t need the chemicals of a hot tub.
But if your budget won’t quite stretch to any of these, there are other ways to make a city garden feel like a retreat. Mungeam suggests zoning the space as much as possible to create secluded areas where you can switch off. “Think about all the senses,” she says. “We have a water feature which gives a lovely bubbling sound, multi-stem trees that rustle in the wind and sarcococca confusa, which smells lovely in the winter. Being surrounded by plants makes it feel zen-like — even in the middle of a city.”
