Comprising a Life | The Bonsai, Travels and Haiku of Vaughn Banting

Zen Garden before teahouse was added

The Japanese garden idealizes forms in nature and attempts to express an ideal universe within a given space. Sometimes that space may be ill defined with the addition of "borrowed scenery".

On the other hand the tea garden's boundaries are more or less determined by the scale of its teahouse. Japanese tea gardens are therefore usually much smaller and more intimate than are their larger counterparts. Their purpose is to provide guests a quiet space for reflection before participating in the tea ceremony. Like other Japanese gardens, tea gardens reflect the style of the period they attempt to emulate.

In my case I have tried to create a dry garden style of tea garden, with raked gravel representing water and shaped plants and rock groupings representing landmasses. This garden style was popular during the Kamakura period that lasted between 1192 and 1333. My hope is that my garden may eventually bring to mind traces of Nanzenji located in Kyoto.

The following photographs are of a work in progress. When I have lived with the rocks arranged as they currently are for a long enough period of time to know whether I will be able to comfortably maneuver my motorized wheelchair and scooter around them, I will begin the major plantings. None of this will go forward, however until the construction of a tea house facade, the floor of which has already been laid. So what you see in the included photographs is just the bare bones of the garden. I wanted a mud floor but our soil here wicks up too much moisture for that so I had to settle for slate and sandstone.

Something unique you'll notice in the tea garden and not a part of any traditional Japanese garden is my collection of suiseki or "viewing stones" displayed in shallow trays of sand or water (recently enhanced by the addition of some stones from Africa courtesy Guy Giudry). These you will see displayed on shelves and pedestals, a remnant from the time the area housed my bonsai collection. These are mostly in variations of the Shelter stone (Yadori-ishi) and Coastal rock stone (Iwagata-ishi) styles.

The reason I chose this virtual style of garden is because I am not easily able to get down on the ground to maintain any real water filled features. My compromise was to work into the design, three large stoneware bowels; these to provide a place to enjoy my goldfish and fixed with three different fountain devises, to provide the sounds of trickling, spouting and bubbling water to the garden.