Karesansui vs Roji (Tea Garden)
枯山水 / 露地
Japanese temple gardens of stone, gravel and moss, planted with no flowers and set out through the placement of stone alone.
How to tell them apart. A dry garden is looked at from the veranda and never entered. A roji has stepping stones and a water basin, and it is a path walked to the tea house.
Karesansui
A Japanese garden that uses no water at all, representing waterscape and cosmos through raked sand and set stones. The fifteen rocks of Ryōan-ji compose by subtraction, and minimalists worldwide still cite them as the archetype for designing emptiness.
Roji (Tea Garden)
Here the garden is the path to the tea room and nothing else. Stepping stones, the crouching basin and the middle gate set the walker's pace and state of mind, building a mountain retreat inside the city and designing the time it takes to arrive.
| Karesansui | Roji (Tea Garden) | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | Muromachi period– | 16th century– |
| Family | Garden Styles | Garden Styles |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Water implied in raked gravel / Asymmetric stone groupings / A fixed viewpoint from the veranda / Radical subtraction | Stepping-stone pacing / The tsukubai basin / Outer and inner roji transition / A hermitage within the city |
| Best used for | Gardens for small plots and indoor courts where water cannot be used · Quiet waiting and seating spaces meant to be viewed from one position | Approaches to a shop or venue designed to change the visitor's state of mind · Narrow strip sites turned from passage into experience |
| Type | No signage, and no naming of what the stones stand for | Minimal signage, with the stones underfoot giving the direction |
| Composition | Fix one viewpoint from the veranda and group stones in odd numbers | Stone spacing sets stride and speed, a gate divides outer from inner |
| Material | Rake white gravel into current, with color only from moss and stone | Only the basin's water sound, moss and a lantern, no flower color |
| Caution | Adding more stones to create points of interest fills up the emptiness, kills the suggestion of water, and leaves nothing but a bed of gravel. | Laying the stepping stones at even intervals tidies them into ornament and disables the device that breaks a walker's rhythm and makes them stop. |