Rekindling pleasant memories of childhood can have a joyful, peaceful and stabilizing effect in today's world of upheavals and crises. Those hours of watching Beverly Hillbillies reruns after school with a big bowl of ice cream really were worthwhile, no matter what Mom said at the time. And did we ever answer that old question of who was really better: the Brady Bunch or the Partridge Family? If the previous two sentences put a smile on your face, this ideabook is for you.

With a few tweaks in your garden design, your own space can nurture that seemingly lost inner child. Your garden can become a place where you can dream big, let your imagination run wild and put this hectic thing called adulthood into a new and manageable perspective. Let's get started. Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC Create a sense of journey. Doesn't this photo rekindle memories of packing your Spiderman lunch box and running away from home for the afternoon? You may be saying to yourself that you don't have the acreage to pull this off. No worries. Jay Sifford Garden Design This photo shows a suburban side yard that leads to an Asian-style backyard garden. The 8-foot Chinese doors add a sense of mystery and anticipation of what is to come. The curved turf pathway is flanked by mass plantings of Panicum virgatum 'Dallas Blues', a switchgrass that grows to 4 to 5 feet by summer. The shape of the pathway inspires a sense of journey and discovery. What's around the next curve and behind the doors? Daryl Toby - AguaFina Gardens International Build a fort. Gilligan's bamboo hut was extremely cool, but many homeowner's association regulations would prohibit building such a structure in our corners of suburbia. Nurture a sense of "fort" instead by creating a secluded seating area around the bend, hidden from view.

The point is to have a go-to place where you can look out at the world but the world can't see you. When you're designing seating for this area, make sure it backs up against a wall, screen or hedge. Having something impermeable behind us helps us feel more secure. What's the point of having a fort if it isn't secure? Secret Gardens Use familiar plants in different ways. Remember playing hide-and-seek behind large foundation plantings, like these boxwoods?

By using boxwood in an updated landscape, you can rediscover their timeless beauty while rekindling those fun memories. These days I would be most likely to shear them into balls and have them rolling down a hill like giant marbles, or plant them in a grid pattern coming up through a substrate of crushed stone. Sozo Landscape Design Use updated cultivars of childhood plants. Who doesn't remember the huge, gangly junipers from childhood? I'm not suggesting you plant a stand of those monsters in your garden, but how about planting some of the newer cultivars of horizontalis, conferta or even procumbens nana?

I'll bet that you develop a new appreciation for this diverse group of conifers while still maintaining a subtle link to your childhood. Jay Sifford Garden Design Use plants with large foliage or structure to change your sense of scale. This garden works for our discussion on several levels. First, this stacked-stone wall with a seat is embedded into a hill in a front yard, effectively creating a fort. It brings the viewer closer to eye level with the plants, reducing his or her own perceived scale or size in relationship to the plants.

Now onto the plants. Who wouldn't feel a sense of awe sitting in the midst of these large-foliaged plants? The dinner-plate-size leaves of 'Spotty Dotty' Chinese mayapple, the enormous chartreuse leaves of 'Sum and Substance' hosta and the glossy Acanthus mollis foliage, all woven together with the nearly black heucheras, add a dose of fairy tale wonder that even the most logical among us would feel. Other plants that might work include gunnera, Rheum, ostrich fern and Farfugium.

In another part of this garden a spectacular 'Cascade Falls' weeping bald cypress shrouds a pathway. Its delicate fernlike foliage gives the visitor a sense of entering into an imaginary world that lies just beyond. Monrovia Add a few wonderfully bizarre plants. Depending on where you garden, you might consider incorporating a contorted tree such as this Harry Lauder's walking stick, a monkey puzzle tree, some Jack-in-the-pulpits, a serpentine blue atlas cedar, a prostrate larch or hemlock, or a ghostly Alaskan cedar.

These are all guaranteed to bring out the inner child. One word of warning: Don't go overboard, lest your garden look like a carnival freak show. Incorporate art or artifacts that transport you back to a simpler time. This little robot, while certainly not up to gallery standards for collectible art, made me laugh.

One of my earliest childhood memories was of an old TV show called Lost in Space. The robot on it was very cool. I still remember him saying, "Danger, Will Robinson!" Who doesn't need a prompt to remind us to smile and laugh?