Stuart's Zen Garden

The Team

The usual list of suspects helped me put this together:

Len (my Dad) - planning, advice
Pat (my Mum) - tea making, house tidying(!)
Clem - pruning, waste management (!)
Simon (Clem's mate) - turf removal, digging, pruning

Many thanks to you all!

The Problem

Three years after moving in to my house, the garden was in a bad way. Moss had destroyed the lawn, both the originally rather boring flower beds were overrun with large weeds and I had no time to tend to so much planted area. Something drastic was called for..

The Solution

A low maintainance garden seemed a good idea. Something unusual with plenty of style and that could be enjoyed all year round, even in rain and at night, when I am usually at home (and why the planting wasn't getting attention!).

...so some garden design books and research later, I concluded that plants are generally hard work and grass is the worst of the lot. Rocks however, seemed to offer all I was after. Thus began the path of enlightenment :-). I booked two weeks off work and began some proper research into Shinto/Zen garden design and the mysteries of Feng Shui. What emerged was both exciting and daunting:

A garden with a proper purpose!

Zen gardens have a whole bunch of meanings and purpose involved in their design; I relished the challenge of squeezing several aspects into the smallish space of 7x7.5m. I decided to base the concept on the Edo period Tea Gardens where a path leads the viewer on a journey from earthly things to a more ethereal and 'Zen' mindstate through increasingly abstract views. This is achieved by hiding the garden features such that they appear only as the path is walked; thus the design incorporates two gateways, two plantings which serve as hedges, and screens to prevent casual viewing from the patio and house windows. The features to be discovered amongst these hedges and screens are:

a dry landscape Zen area with a Buddhist triumvate rock arrangement and gravel sea
a meditative viewing area with low lantern (Yukimi) and stone seat
a stepping stone pathway through a low bamboo gate
a timber bridge over a stream
a humble wash basin (Tsukubai) and tall lantern (Oribe)
a wet running stream bordered by rocks and gravel
another stepping stone path alongside the stream
a dragons gate waterfall in the NE corner (very important the water flows in the correct direction!)
an entrance gateway with stone lions

If that seems like a lot; it is! See if you can identify them all on the original plan..

Also I wanted to make good use of the garden's surrounding features (Shakkei), in this case the trees to the left and right, to make my plot seem bigger.

I decided to start with the Zen part at the end of the garden and work back towards the house. That way I could see if I really liked it and not commit to doing it all in one go..

The design was completed during the first few days of the holiday; so it was time to find a supplier for the aggregates who would also let me choose the monoliths I wanted for the dry landscape part of the garden. I can highly recommend Pinks Hill in Farnham.

The Zen Karesansui area

First I laid out the design on the ground with a handy collection of spare walling blocks that the previous owners had left in the garden (thanks!). Note that I have already pruned the young trees against the fence to clear the lower branches, so they do not distract from the rocks on the ground and instead lead the eye up to the older trees behind the fence. Note also the state of the grass (!) and roughly hacked down weeds..

When I was happy with the arrangement, it was time to start digging..

Here is the first line of turf being cut, and here you can see how I pile up the turf grassy side down to make the planting mounds. I have also ripped out the nasty wooden border logroll (it's pretty rotten) to get a smooth rise from the ground.

Note also the bare patch to the right; this is where there were some handy paving slabs with a rusty old swing chair perched on top. Clearly the builders or previous owners hadn't bothered putting down even a sand base, nevermind a weedstop fabric! The slabs will come in useful in a minute..

Here is the viewing / meditation seat are being built up, and a view of the site from the bedroom window at the end of day 2. Note the severely hacked back Buddleia Alterniflora tied to the stake, the sorry-looking Convolvulus which I just transplanted and the weed-choked border which is about to be dug over and doused in weedkiller! I left in the border logroll this side to provide a backing for the cobble beach, and support for the front of the seat area. You won't really see it once the cobbles are laid..

Here you can see the result of a lengthy shopping trip to Wickes. The sales assistant was bemused by the amount of time I spent selecting rockery stones from the bins in the garden centre.. even more so when I started laying them out like this in their yard! I am pleased with the turtle; he has come out really well. The crane was far more difficult to get right. The rocks used here are grey slate and blush [or pink] granite. As you can see I made sure they looked OK when wet when I got them home. Rock always seems to look best in the rain.. it has much less colour in the dry.

Also you can see the amount of rubble and stones I dug up whilst clearing the turf. Three bucketfulls! I'll find a few good uses for these later too..

Day 4: The first part of the build! I spent the morning building the seat area with patio paving slabs on a sand base and landscape fabric to suppress weeds. Two of the slabs are broken in half from where the swing chair stood on them. I put these at the back where they won't show so much:-) I also found out just how vicious that Berberis is to the left of the slabs..

..and then a 10-tonne truck arrived with these two innocent looking Big Bags on board. Time to start the real work!

One bag was the sacks of medium cobbles. Good, they should be easy to move in a wheelbarrow. The other bag was 0.7 tonne of white gravel with three large rocks on top. Well the gravel is easy enough to deal with but what to do to move the large monoliths?

And how do I get them through this doorway and down into the garden!?

..Click here to follow in the continuing saga of my garden!

Stuart