Get Inspired By These Tranquil Zen Gardens For Your Yard

Minimalist by design with an emphasis on the bare essentials of nature, Zen gardens are prized for their calming and de-stressing effects. By stripping away worldly distractions and focusing on sophisticated simplicity, these spaces offer beauty and low maintenance in any area. Your design can be personalized by adding just a few typical elements like lanterns, greenery, sand, rocks, and water features.

The Home Depot suggests placing the garden where it can also be enjoyed as a view from inside your home. Once you’ve chosen the area, select a focal point, such as a small sculpture or statue, to begin your design. A traditional zen garden is primarily dry and consists mainly of rocks, sand, and gravel with some simple greenery like evergreen shrubbery and moss. Modern styles include fountains, ponds, flowering plants, and customized ornamentation and lighting. Whether you seek to change your entire backyard landscape or craft just a portion of it, you can easily find a little zen inspiration for your new Japanese-style garden.

Whether you like the look of a metal lantern or a stone one, these decorative fixtures, called tenkeibutsu, are a perfect addition to a zen garden and are a great way to personalize yours. Lanterns are symbols of enlightenment and are multi-functional as they can add lighting and represent the elements of stone or metal.

Statues add interest and a focal point to your garden. Although Buddha statues are popular, you might choose an animal or a large stone lantern. The figure should aid in meditation, improve the garden’s energy, and represent an element or principle such as strength or serenity.

If you have the space and the budget, a koi pond makes a beautiful addition to your garden. A zen garden is traditionally a dry space containing rocks and greenery but not water (mizu). However, water features are a popular way to bring positive and peaceful chi to Japanese-style gardens.

In zen gardening, the design must represent what exists in nature, and water (mizu) and its flow symbolize the passage of time. In traditional zen gardens, sand and small pebbles create areas that look like water. And many Japanese gardens include actual water features such as fountains, waterfalls, and ponds.

Bamboo is so versatile that it can be used as a live plant (check to make sure you aren’t planting an invasive species), or the dried shoots can be implemented as screening, fencing, borders, and tubing in water features.

Fences, walls, and borders add visual interest while creating privacy and defining a space. Wood is popular, but garden designers use bamboo, hedges, brick, or stone to make these divisions.

Washing your hands in a zen garden is not only a practice of good hygiene but also creates emotions of harmony and relaxation. This can be a simple basin of fresh water with dipping pots that are used to pour water over hands or as complex as a fountain with a continuous flow.

Areas of combed sand, gravel, or pebbles are traditional components of a zen garden. Sand, in particular, is preferred because it’s malleable, and white sand tends to represent purity. The entire body of sand can be a meditation tool interpreted as open space or water.

Large boulders (ishi) are used in zen gardens to symbolize mountains, which indicates strength and power. Sometimes, if upright, they represent trees. When situated by an entrance, these monoliths serve as a welcome to visitors.

Pagodas are common structures used for meditation and worship. A typical pagoda usually has an odd number of tiers that sometimes represent the five natural Earth elements. Any structure that you find suitable for your garden will do. The purpose is to create a space where you feel comfortable relaxing, meditating, or perhaps having tea.

Intentionally making time in your busy schedule for tea is an ideal way to create a ritual of peace and calm. Designing a special place in the garden for the daily tea will help connect to nature and allow for mindfulness.

A gate is a welcoming gesture in a zen garden representing a passage from one desired state of enlightenment to another. Depending on your beliefs, it can also separate the regular world from the sacred one. Gates can have doors or be perpetually open without them attached; the choice is yours!