Still Places #3 : Gardens of Reflection
All Text & Images: Dom Galloway | GardenSpace (unless otherwise noted)
In our modern urban and suburban living our gardens have become places for show, for utility, for play. They are practical spaces made for daily living. They are for the now. They change and are reshaped over time as our needs change.
Some gardens, however, are created for deeper reasons. These gardens endure in time because they speak directly to a persistent inner need, a need for reflection.
These are quieter places—intimate, restrained, often secluded—where the landscape is not just an aesthetic composition but has an emotional and philosophical depth. It becomes a space that provides comfortable solitude, with time to think, giving opportunity for greater self-understanding.
Dr. Inazo Nitobe Gardens, University of British Columbia, Vancouver Canada
Across cultures, reflective gardens often centre on this theme of inwardness. In Chinese scholar gardens every stone, pond, and pavilion is chosen not only for its beauty but for its symbolic resonance. These gardens are not about symmetry or taming nature; they reflect a poetic meditation on the world. The winding paths and layered views are designed to evoke the wandering mind, drawing the viewer into contemplation. The scholar walks, pauses, observes—not only the garden, but themselves moving through it.
Japanese Zen gardens, by contrast, use minimalism as a form of spiritual clarity. A few rocks, some carefully placed moss, raked gravel: these elements evoke mountains, islands, and water without depicting them literally. Here, the gardener becomes a philosopher of emptiness, and the viewer a participant in a subtle meditation. The simplicity of form does not impoverish the experience; it deepens it. The Zen garden resists easy interpretation and accessibility but invites stillness of mind.
In the West, the reflective garden emerges in different forms. The enclosed medieval cloister, often attached to a monastery or cathedral, was both a sacred and psychological space. The quadrangle, often planted with herbs or a central fountain, provided monks with a space to pray, study, and walk in silence. This garden was not ornamental but devotional—a spatial embodiment of divine order and inner peace. Later, during the Renaissance and Enlightenment, private gardens became sites of philosophical musing, as individuals began to explore nature as a source of personal insight and emotional expression.
What unites all these traditions is the sense that the garden can hold complexity. It allows sorrow, longing, joy, and wonder to coexist. A garden does not solve the questions we carry—but it gives them space to be seen more clearly, it gives us time. In its patterns and pauses, we find and get a deeper perspective on our lives. The reflective garden, then, is a dialogue between the world outside and the world within.
“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order once more.” - John Burroughs
And this same possibility is open to us today. Whether through a secluded corner of your own backyard, a path designed to slow your pace, a water feature that carries thought into quietness, or planting that creates intimacy and retreat, a garden can be shaped to meet this deep human need. Reflective gardens are not only for the scholar, the monk, or the poet. They are for anyone who feels the pull toward peace, who longs for a sanctuary, who wishes their garden to be not just a space outside, but a place that restores their soul.
To create such a garden is to weave yourself into a tradition that stretches across cultures and centuries. It is to claim for yourself not only beauty, but depth: a garden that becomes a mirror for the soul, a companion for life.
If you a looking to establish such a space for yourself, contact us today.