Starting a Family Garden

Once you’ve created your Zen garden and placed it in an open, accessible spot—preferably near a window or among your houseplants—it becomes a shared space for creativity and mindfulness.

Each member of the household can then find themselves their own treasure box (If you enjoy maintaining a cohesive aesthetic in your home, consider purchasing a set of matching boxes for each person. Alternatively, they can be invited to find or create their own box in their own time.) This box will serve as storage for a small personal collection of meaningful or simply interesting items they might want to integrate "in the garden". These could include toys, crystals, seashells, pine cones, dried wood, origami, or handcrafted figures—anything small that fits the space and doesn’t damage the sand (avoid wet, sticky, or brittle items). It becomes an exercise in collecting and becoming mindful of the objects in our immediate environment—items found in your home that carry meaning, as well as symbolic pieces you gather while walking outdoors.

To keep the garden neat consider covering it with glass or something transparent that keeps it visible to the eyes, thus more inviting. The best way to protect the rakes is to lay them down in the sand, beneath the covering ...

With this setup, your Zen garden becomes accessible, evolving centrepiece for your household’s imagination and calm. Anyone of you could decide to bring out the garden along with their own treasure box to the kitchen table, or to a desk or table elsewhere in your dwelling... In the same way as taking out a board game, a book, some arts and crafts...

The especially liberating thing about creating, dabbling or sitting by your own Zen garden is that "In The Garden", being a beginner isn’t just welcome—it’s encouraged. It is, in fact, the best state from which to approach the experience. That's what makes it so multi-generation friendly! Every time you find yourself sitting in front of your small, miniature landscape, I invite you to look at it as if it were the very first time you laid eyes on it. No need to bring any knowledge or experience with you. All you need is to simply be "in the garden"; to start, every time, exactly where you are—with the thoughts you have, the mood you are in, and the present moment you are living.

It's worth remembering here that the smallness of the box is important. As we say sometimes "too much can be as bad as not enough!"