Zen garden

How to play Zen garden

Pick the rake and drag across the sand. Parallel grooves follow your hand, so long slow strokes give the cleanest lines. Switch to the rings tool, press where the centre should be and drag outward to lay perfect circles, the classic move around a stone. The stone and moss tools place scenery with a tap, and you can drag pieces around until the composition feels right. Grooves flow around whatever you place. The smooth brush settles the sand back down bit by bit, and the reset button lets the whole tray fade back to untouched sand. When you like what you made, save it as a picture.

Tips

• Rake slowly, the grooves look best when your strokes are long and unhurried
• Place stones first, then rake rings around them like a real karesansui garden
• Use the wide rake for the open field and the fine rake for tight corners
• Save your garden as a PNG before you smooth it away, it makes a nice wallpaper

About Zen garden

Zen garden is based on the Japanese karesansui, the dry landscape gardens you find at temples in Kyoto. Monks rake gravel into flowing patterns around a few carefully placed rocks, and the raking itself is the meditation, not the finished result. That is the whole idea here too. There is no score, no timer and no wrong move, just sand that responds to your hand. Drag a rake through it, circle a stone, smooth it all out and start again. People keep a small version of these gardens on their desk for the same reason: a minute of raking calms a busy head. This one lives in your browser and cleans up after itself.

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