Yuki Kawae is a designer and creator of small zen gardens. These gardens are made to be contemplated, not to walk in them. Thanks to the fact that Yuki Kawae has an account on Instagram, we can appreciate through small videos, how Zen gardens are made.
Seeing how the patterns are formed by raking the sand, which tries to represent the ripples of the water in the sea, around the rocks, is something very relaxing. You can tell that Yuki is an expert on the subject, because the patterns are exact, without using any type of guides.
Since these Zen gardens are so small, you can place them anywhere in your room or office. In pages like free market or amazon, they sell the elements that are necessary for you to make your own garden. By watching the videos on Yuki’s account, you can take a lot of pattern ideas, for you to use.
But even if you do not plan to acquire a Zen garden, you can also enter the account to see how Yuki kawee works. You are amazed by the accuracy of his movements, he makes perfect lines, waves and circles by hand.
Examples of small zen gardens
I was already aware of the existence of Zen gardens, but the ones I had seen were gardens of a large size. Now that I know there are small gardens, I am considering buying one.
A zen garden would be an ideal hobby, for these days of quarantine. It would take many days for me to do something close to what Yuki does, but I still think it would be a good entertainment option.
Searching on wikipedia I found more information about zen gardens, for example, each of the elements used in the gardens has an interpretation. This I copied from the wikipedia page:
- The gravel represents the ocean and the rocks represent the islands of Japan.
- The rocks represent the tigress with her cubs, swimming towards a dragon.
- Rocks are part of the kanji, which means heart, spirit, or mind.
- The rocks would be the peaks of mountains on a sea of fog.
There are even criticisms of Zen gardens, because you might think that they have many centuries of history and tradition. But it turns out that this style of garden is a western creation from the late 20th century that has no foundation in Japanese gardening.
For now, I already follow Yuki Kawae’s account, even though I don’t have a garden, because the videos where he does patterns in their zen gardens, they are amazing.