Nature

A renowned designer of Japanese gardens contemplates wildness, humanity, beauty, the liquid state of the world.

From his vantage point as a garden designer and writer based in Kyoto, Marc Peter Keane examines the world around him and delivers astonishing insights through an array of narratives. 

How the names of gardens reveal their essential meaning. A new definition of what art is. What trees are really made of. The true meaning of the enigmatic torii gate found at Shinto shrines. Why we give flowers as gifts. The essential, underlying unity of the world.

In Japanese gardens, composition follows from placement of the first stone; all elements and plantings become interconnected. These eight essays on Kyoto gardens similarly begin with keen description and build into richly meditative excursions into art, Buddhism, nature, and science.

Landscape architect Marc Keane shows how Japanese gardens are both a microcosm of the natural universe and a clear expression of our humanity, mirroring how we think, worship, and organize our lives and communities. Filled with passages of alluring beauty, this is a truly transcendent book about "experiencing" Japanese design.