This document provides instructions for building a miniature Japanese rock garden, also called a Zen garden, at home. It describes finding the necessary materials like a container, fine sand, round rocks, moss and small gardening tools. The instructions explain assembling the garden by layering the sand on the bottom, placing the rocks and moss, and raking waves in the sand. Creating the Zen garden had a calming effect on the author's 11-year old child. The author plans to take their kids to a large Japanese garden to see professional gardeners maintain the sand.

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My first job when I graduated from an advertising and public relations diploma course at
college was working at the Nikka Yuko Japanese Gardens. It was a combination job of both

2. media and tour guiding. As a new grad I was excited about doing something related to what I
had just taken in school. I was perhaps just as excited about wearing around a Yukata
(Japanese house dress) and the special socks (I called them my Ninja socks). However,
when I actually started working there I became excited about how cool the gardens really
are.
My favourite part of the garden is the special rock and sand garden inside the house
courtyard. Back then I loved having discussions with my fellow workers about how they got
out of there without messing up the sand! Frankly, it’s still a bit of a mystery to me.
Japanese rock gardening has a long history. According to Wikipedia The Japanese rock
garden (枯山水karesansui), also called a Zen garden, creates a miniature stylized landscape
through carefully composed arrangements of rocks, water features, moss, pruned trees and
bushes. The gravel or sand is raked to represent ripples in water.
Zen gardens are for meditation and are filled with symbolism. Stones represent islands.
Lines in the sand represent water, waves, seas or rivers. Moss represents forests. The
motion of raking the sand is calming. Here’s the steps I followed to make a mini Japanese
rock garden at home:
First step: Find a container. You need something that is watertight. It has to hold small
granules of sand and water. I looked all around and eventually found this square tin
container at Canadian Tire. It has little handles and was just big enough to sit in the middle
of my kitchen table.
Second step: Find the sand. This was harder than I expected. After trying both gardening
shops and hobby shops I finally found some in the pet store in the aquarium section. They
had different sized granules but I wanted it to be pretty fine so that the rake would work well.
Third Step: Find the rocks. I was originally just going to go outside and see what I could find,
but while at the pet store they were selling the kind I had envisioned in my head- perfectly
round ones. So I picked up a couple there, and felt a little silly paying for rocks.
Four step: Find moss and tools. Moss is actually not easy to find. After multiple attempts
and debating whether to get artificial moss or not I ended up getting the real stuff at a
Country Blooms Nursery. There are, in fact, 22,000 kinds of moss worldwide. I ended up
getting Scotch Moss and I love the look of it. My small garden tools I found at Peavy Mart. I
saw them when I was buying terrarium items and had them in the back of my head for a Zen
Garden. They are the perfect size and all of my kids were very excited seeing them.
Fifth Step: Put it all together. I put a layer of sand to cover the bottom of the container. Then
added in my rocks and twisted them ever so slightly to help them sink into the sand.
Following that I added my moss on top. I raked waves and my four-year-old daughter
watched me immediately asking me if she could do it too. Since then, all of my kids have
spent time making various designs in the sand. My 11-year-old spent about 20 minutes
working on our little Zen garden and announced, “This is really calming to me.” So I’m
guessing it’s doing its part in our home.

3. I’m going to take my kids to the grand opening this upcoming weekend at the Nikko Yuka
Japanese gardens in Lethbridge so that my kids can see the big Zen garden and we can
chat about how the gardeners do the raking without leaving a step.
Resources
Tabletop Zen Garden on Amazon
Tabletop Zen Garden
Buddha Zen Garden YouTube
Buddha Zen Garden Links