Few things in life are more inspiring and more beautiful than nature itself, especially when you can capture even just a bit of that vitality and bring it home to enhance your own personal environment. Of course, there's no excuse for plundering the wilds for our own entertainment, but chosen judiciously and responsibly, the beauties of nature can be ours in small measure. Here are some ideas:

1. Fresh flowers. Nothing quite compares with the scent, the look and the feel of a perfectly chosen vase or bowl, either brimming with a vibrant bouquet of buxom blooms or encapsulating simplicity itself in the perfection of one single stem or branch. Cut them from your own garden or purchase them from a well-stocked vendor (but please don't cut them from the wild unless you know for sure that you're not removing rare or important plants, and then only take a few from any one spot). The richness of a king cannot hope to compare with the exquisite perfection of a budding flower.

2. Create an arrangement of polished or raw stones. Use a bowl, a basket, a cloth or whatever base works for the space and the materials and set out your rocks, as you would arrange any other material. Balance the shapes and colors, the textures and the weight so that it forms a natural statuary of living stone. Wish stones (those trendy polished river rocks with inspirational messages carved or painted on them) are also great for this exercise - fill a shallow container with them and pull one out at random when you need a lift.

3. If flowers are the royalty of natural beauty, then live, growing plants are their consorts. Nothing calms, relaxes and re-energizes all at once like a room filled with carefully chosen plants. Flowering or green, houseplants or small trees, they clear the air and the mind with equal facility. Just be sure to get varieties that match both the environment and your ability to care for them - dying plants are nobody's vision of joy.

4. Bring the outdoors in with the sounds and scents of your favorite places. Use potpourri (the natural kind, please!), essential oils, naturally scented candles and the like to recreate the "scent-print" of your ideal getaway. And to back it up, find recordings of the birds, the surf, the wind in the trees - whatever takes you back to where you wish you'd never left. That should hold you over until you find a way to return.

5. Sand and water - two of the most important elements in human history. At times the most calming of environments and at others the most violent, few twosomes are so widely renown and so wildly at home in either their natural setting or the home and hearth. Bring this elemental power into your home with a playful or calming water feature and a small, carefully maintained sand garden (you can even create a table-top versions - just make sure they're not upset by small children and pets). The trickling streams of water calm the mind and rejuvenate the soul, while the bed of sand provides an outlet for meditation and quiet reflection. Both are a wonderful addition to a home, and together they form an almost indescribable sense of peace and sacredness that's hard to recreate in any other fashion.

Bringing the beauty, the power and the heart of nature into your environment is the surest way to bring yourself up to your highest level of being. There is something in nature that settles us, that inspires us and that offers us the peace of mind we need to make wise choices and fruitful actions. Why miss the opportunity to instill that essence into your life when it lies so easily within your grasp?