Style 4: Tea Gardens
The tea gardens of Japan originated when the Zen monks brought the ritual of drinking powdered tea to the country to reduce sleepiness during meditation. The tea ceremony was a formal affair in which tea leaves were ground down and steeped in a bitter broth, which people then passed around in a common bowl.
The gardens, which are designed to evoke the qualities of solitude and age, are constructed with simple, rustic materials to maintain harmony with the atmosphere and, they center on the ceremonial teahouse. Made from natural materials, teahouses blend into their surroundings and are accessed by a path that symbolizes the journey into a more peaceful state of mind. Guests enter the teahouse through a low door, so built to humble them upon entering.
The houses are enclosed by an outer entrance garden where participants wait for the ceremony to begin and a sacred inner garden that you do not enter but only observe and contemplate from outside its walls. This series of small areas in the tea garden is designed as part of the process of preparing guests' minds for the ceremony. The outer garden contains a water basin for people to purify themselves by washing away sins, a bench for resting and specially designed lanterns.
If you like your garden free of man-made structures, you'll want to read about natural gardens on the next page.
