12 Facts About Zen garden

Japanese dry garden or Japanese rock garden, often called a zen garden, is a distinctive style of Japanese garden.

Zen garden described several other styles of rock garden, which usually included a stream or pond, including the great river style, the mountain river style, and the marsh style.

Zen garden Buddhism was introduced into Japan at the end of the 12th century, and quickly achieved a wide following, particularly among the Samurai class and war lords, who admired its doctrine of self-discipline.

The upper Zen garden is a dry rock Zen garden which features three rock "islands".

The Zen garden is meant to be viewed from a seated position on the veranda of the hojo, the residence of the abbot of the monastery.

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Invention of the zen garden was closely connected with developments in Japanese ink landscape paintings.

The Zen garden was built by the daimyo Otomo Sorin, who was a convert to Christianity.

Zen garden created four different gardens, one for each face of the main temple building.

Zen garden made one garden with five artificial hills covered with grass, symbolizing the five great ancient temples of Kyoto; a modern rock garden, with vertical rocks, symbolizing Mount Horai; a large "sea" of white gravel raked in a checkboard pattern; and an intimate garden with swirling sand patterns.

Many different theories have been put forward about what the Zen garden is supposed to represent, from islands in a stream to swimming baby tigers to the peaks of mountains rising above the clouds to theories about secrets of geometry or of the rules of equilibrium of odd numbers.

That the Buddhism of Zen influenced garden design was first suggested not in Japan, but in the West by a Hawaiian garden journalist Loraine Kuck in the 1930s and disputed as such by a scholar of Japanese garden history, Wybe Kuitert in 1988.

Zen priests quote from Chinese treatises on landscape painting indicating that the Japanese rock garden, and its karesansui garden scenery was and still is inspired by or based on first Chinese and later Japanese landscape painting.