Gardening : Building a Sand Garden in Japanese Tradition
We all have a fascination with sand. It can be mesmerizing. Adults lie in it to relax. Children delight at playing in it. Buddhist monks sitting by it are so awed by its beauty and serenity that they are moved to meditate.
Soseki Musoo, a leading philosopher in Kyoto in the 14th Century, is credited with creating the first sand garden. (Kyoto still is where you find most of Japan’s surviving sand gardens.) Tired of the customary landscaping with green plants, he wanted to try something different and hit upon the idea of using sand--not to simulate a beach or seashore, as we might do it American style, but as a form of art to beguile and inspire prayer.
Symbolic Designs
Zen sand gardens are symbolic, as the term for them, kare-sansui, suggests--kare means dry, san means mountains, and sui means water. Containing only sand, rocks and moss, representing water, mountains and forests, respectively, the sand garden was the epitome of simplicity. Sand was raked into lines resembling the ripples of a stream or lake.
The rocks, chosen for their pleasing or unusual shapes and assorted sizes, were arranged artistically on asymmetrical lines. A group of three small rocks often might be placed opposite a solitary large one some distance away. Moss was planted around the rocks or allowed to emerge naturally.
Until modern times, sand gardens were the province of religious orders, royalty and the rich, and were never even seen by the rank and file, who for one thing lacked the land for them.
Off-center balance and odd numbers are typical of Japanese design, says Toku M. Sugiyama, an ikebana floral master and the American director of the Sogetsu school of Japanese flower arranging. And while maintaining a sand garden so that it displayed not a speck of dirt nor a grain out of place might seem unattainable, for monks living in the temple it was not a burden at all. Sugiyama says raking and cleaning the sand and sprinkling the moss was as much a part of their daily ritual as meditating, polishing floors and walkways to a high gloss or keeping their quarters immaculate.
Traditional Setting
Traditionally, Sugiyama notes, a sand garden was located in a space like a courtyard, bounded by picture windows, pathways or garden walls. With no plantings in the sand or trees overhead to cast debris, maintaining it was mostly a matter of putting back in place the sand patterns disarranged by wind, storm or an animal or bird walking on it, or fluffing the sand after it had been beaten by rain.
Each sand garden has a story to tell, usually based on Zen philosophy. But whether the person looking at it knows the story is unimportant; a sand garden is designed to invite the viewer to put his own interpretation on it. It is intended to cast an air of mystery. In one famous temple garden, for example, there are 15 rocks, but they are arranged so that no matter from what angle they are seen, one remains invisible. The spectator is informed that the garden contains 15 rocks, but try as he might, he can never find more than 14 from any one vantage point.
A sand garden can be an appealing featuring in a home garden. Maryland Sculptor Amalie Rothschild admired the Oriental sand gardens she had seen in books and she also has a great fondness for beaches, and from the two fascinations an idea was born.
In 1957, a swimming pool was added to the Rothschild property. Alongside it, bounded on the other side by the house, was a 20x4-foot patch of ground in need of landscaping. “Where there is water,” Rothschild said to herself, “there should be sand.”
Because the area she was planning to dress up was mostly barren clay left in poor condition by the builder constructing the pool--”The kind of soil you’d never think of planting anything in,” she said--she did nothing more than smooth the surface and spread 3 to 4 inches of sand on top. She recommends the white play-box variety, which she obtained at a quarry. The sand is easier to handle she says, if you buy it already bagged, but be sure to get pure white sand and not the tan builder’s sand, she adds.
No-Frills Model
Although borrowing from the Japanese model, Rothschild’s rendition embodies none of its formality. Hers is a beach still life, pure and simple. Rothschild subscribes to the philosophy that “less is more.” But given her ingenuity, it is portrayal with dash. Even though it contains materials that Buddhist monks would never think of including, the one respect in which her garden pays heed to the virgin concept is its lack of frills.
The sand is edged on two sides with railroad ties and a flagstone walkway, on the other two by the concrete surface surrounding the pool. There is also a see-through fence walling off the pool.
Strive for an open, uncluttered look, with as much sand left bare as possible, Rothschild says. The composition will look best, she continues, if you group smaller objects, place some in association with plants--although not necessarily right next to them--and stagger their positions rather than spacing them evenly in a straight line.
Several whole and broken conch shells lie near the center of the garden. There is also a 4-foot-high steel sculpture and a giant shell holding sedum planted many years ago and not given any attention since.
Tips for Home Gardeners
Yoshie Shinomoto, the Tokyo-born landscape designer who for the past 10 years has been directing operations at the Oriental gardens and museum at Breezewood, an estate in Monkton, Md., offers a number of tips for home gardeners.
In preparing the foundation, Shinomoto says, clean the weeds out thoroughly by hand or remove them with a herbicide. Pack the earth tightly by tamping, stomping or running over it with a roller. That will keep worms from creeping into the sand or the soil from spilling into it. Better yet, lay a sheet of plastic or a woven landscape fabric over the bed before putting down the sand.
To give the garden definition, plant greenery as a background and border the sand with a path, stones, low-growing American boxwood or ground cover--but not grass, which would invade the sand.
Objects suited to the environment include Japanese lanterns, driftwood, statuary, pottery or other such artifacts or a small basin to serve as a pool. Don’t try to use everything at once. The fewer the distractions from the sand, the freer the mind will be to form its own associations and the easier the imagination will take wing.
Easy to Redecorate
The nice thing about a sand garden, Shinomoto observes, is that it’s so easy to redecorate. In the same way you would rearrange the furniture in a house or change the picture on a wall, when you get tired of the objects in a sand garden you can simply take them away and put others in their places.
Two beautifully illustrated books worth reading for information and ideas on creating sand gardens or combining them with other Oriental features are “A Japanese Touch for Your Garden,” by Kiyoshi Seiko, Masanobu Kudo and David H. Engel (Kodansha International: $22.95), and the just-published “Creating Japanese Gardens” by the staff of Ortho Books: $6.95.
