The secret codes and meaning of gardens

Through many generations of development and modification, in every culture, secret codes and meaning have been built into gardens. They are known to certain groups of people, but are kept as secret codes and are unknown by outsiders.




You probably have visited one or more Zen gardens. What were the secret codes and meaning for Zen Gardens? What was the design concept for Zen Gardens?



Here is the answer:



"...Japanese painters and Zen monks (many of them were talented painters also) combined landscape paintings and Zen Buddhism and created a very unique Japanese garden style: the Zen gardens. We could view them as landscape painting done with different materials: sands, rocks and plants. Loraine Kuck even named them "Painter's gardens." Zen paintings and gardens frequently had Zen symbolism: In Zen paintings, houses, villages and small human figures were frequently shown at the foot of a huge cliff, which symbolizes the ordinary world, from which the painter or Zen monk was constantly trying to lift himself; the tiny human figures showed their relative importance in the universe; a monastery was often shown in the background, in a somewhat higher ground; a long climbing path meandered to the peak symbolized the long and hard path to enlightenment. In Zen gardens, rocks symbolized cliffs or peaks and raked gravels symbolized valley or water. The marks on the rocks could symbolize paths to the cliffs or peaks of enlightenment for the pilgrims. The Zen paintings or gardens were not meant to be the representation of a specific scene, but an attempt to generalize the common essence and quality of all scenes observed by the painters, and a means to convey this observation and feeling to others. Only a limited number of plants were used in Zen gardens. The shrubs were trimmed into round shapes and the colors of plants were basically green. Large areas of sand were used to create dry style Zen gardens..."



Quoted from page 129 of "Planting Design Illustrated (2nd edition)," Copyright 2009 Gang Chen

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