Knowhow-Now Article

How To Rake Your Zen Garden's Sand

By Span Glers


The Zen garden sand is not the ordinary sand you step on the beach. Rather, it is pounded granite and usually white or beige in color. The sand in the Zen garden stands for the natural element of water. To achieve the illusion of water, rake through the crushed granite to craft lines throughout the garden. Always rake into patterns.

Raking a Zen garden is different from customary yard work; it is an exercise to calm the mind. A rake is used to form ripples in the sand that looks like water. In order to create these ripples in a Zen garden, it will require at least a 4-inch thick layer of crushed granite. Turkey or chicken grit may be an alternative for the crushed granite.

Here are the basic steps on how to rake your Zen garden sand.

• Choose a rake. A dry landscape garden uses two ordinary types of rakes. One is the saw-tooth rake and the other one is the dowel-tooth rake. The saw-tooth rake is made of a singular piece of wood with the teeth formed in triangularly similar to a saw-blade. The dowel-tooth is made from bamboo or wooden dowels that are fastened to a length of wood.

The space between the teeth varies according to the coarseness of the gravel and the desired design in the gravel. For example, when your gravel is very coarse, you can use a rake with more space between the teeth. The overall size of your rake also depends upon the size of your garden. Meanwhile, a desktop garden requires a very small rake that you can fit between your thumb and forefinger.

• Make up your mind on what you want to achieve with your garden. Is it purely for aesthetic reason or for improving concentration? In general, a Japanese garden is there to create an illusion of water or a landscape, and consequently affect your mind to ponder on those concepts.

• Think of a pattern you like to draw, taking into account all of the other elements such as stones, trees or other plants. For example, place a rock in the sand to make it look like a frog leaping into water. The rake draw circles around the stone to represent the ripple effect.

• Plan your design ahead. Many gardeners apply patterns that leave no footprints, if the garden you are raking is a large one.

While you can design your own raking patterns, there are some classic patterns that pioneer Zen gardeners use:

• The Aranami pattern or the “stormy waves” where you will rake big, rough ridges to represent turbulent seas

• The Ginshanda pattern or the “silver sand and open sea” done by drawing a calm wave pattern

• The Mizumon pattern or the “water pattern” which is a very common pattern that signifies the ripple pattern around the rocks and straight wavelets

• The Ryusui pattern or the “running water”. The sand is raked to look like flowing streams and rivers

• Sazanamimon or the ripple pattern which are waves or ripples around the rocks or the moss islands

• The Seikaiha pattern or the “sea waves”. Very large wave patterns are raked

• The Tatsunami pattern or the “great waves” are zigzag pattern of waves

As you are about to begin, inhale deeply and slowly breathe out to calm the body and mind. Create a blank canvass first on the sand by smoothing the sand or gravel with the opposite side of the rake. Start raking your garden with the design you have in mind. Looks easy, but raking a Zen garden sand takes practice. Whenever you need a calming effect of the mind, go ahead, rake with all might.

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