Contemplative garden

Contemplating and gathering

Contemplative garden

Timelessdry garden (karesansui) · cloister · therapeutic garden · healing garden

hospitaltemple or monasteryschoolhousingpark

A garden designed to be looked at and lingered in, rather than walked through in a hurry. It arranges stones, water, plants and shade around a point from which it is calmly observed.

Solves

What it solves

It slows the pace, invites a pause and helps recovery from stress. In hospitals, seeing trees from the window has been associated with somewhat shorter stays and fewer strong painkillers after surgery.

Today

First define the place from which it is viewed, with shade and seating. Then compose the garden for that view. In the tropics prefer native plants, slowly moving water and ground that lets rain soak in.

Common mistake

Filling it with objects and species with no order or point of view, or copying a Japanese gravel garden that in a humid climate fills with weeds and fungus.

Tomorrow

Hospitals, schools and senior homes incorporate it as part of care. With native plants that flower and fruit it attracts hummingbirds and butterflies that make the garden something alive to contemplate.

Fact In a study published in 1984 with 46 surgical patients, those who saw trees stayed in hospital an average of 7.96 days compared with 8.70 days for those who saw a wall.

Where it comes from

  • 1Monastic cloister Europe and the Mediterranean, since the late 5th century
    Covered galleries around a courtyard with an enclosed garden, like the Romanesque cloister of Santo Domingo de Silos, in Spain.
  • 2Scholars’ garden Suzhou, China, 11th to 19th centuries
    Gardens built by scholars that imitate mountains, rocks and rivers in a small space, with pavilions placed for viewing.
  • 3Zen dry garden Ryōan-ji, Kyoto, Japan, late 15th century
    A rectangle of about 25 by 10 meters with fifteen stones on raked gravel, designed to be viewed seated from the temple terrace.
  • 4Modern tropical garden Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, since 1949
    Roberto Burle Marx’s Sítio brings together some 3,500 tropical species alongside native vegetation and is the first modern tropical garden declared a World Heritage Site.

Masters

  • Geoffrey Bawa Lunuganga Garden, Bentota, Sri Lanka, 1948
    He turned a tropical estate into a garden of long views toward the lake and the hills, with galleries and chairs for lingering to look. He shows how to compose the tropical landscape from viewpoints.
  • Mirei Shigemori Hōjō Garden of Tōfuku-ji Temple, Kyoto, Japan, 1939
    He renewed the Zen garden with raked sand that evokes the sea and grids of moss and stone. He teaches that a few well-ordered elements are enough to invite calm.

Appears in the routes

Sources

See also

Also in Contemplating and gathering

Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.