The Sound of Cherry Blossoms: Zen Lessons from the Garden on Contemplative Design

“It was in our monastery’s sacred garden on Kauai island—a garden that Martin Mosko helped create—where this book took wing. Through him and his work, he taught me that if a garden is created with awareness from the beginning, it will become divine. Mosko and Noden can teach us how to make that happen, inside and out.”

“In this meditation on contemplative design, Mosko and Noden delicately balance practical advice and spiritual insight. An antidote to the mindlessness of computer-driven design, this book understands design as part of a holistic process of finding harmony. Written with concision and clarity, the authors show how the worlds of spiritual practice and landscape design come together in the contemplative Japanese garden. The Sound of Cherry Blossoms is an important manifesto.”

“The Sound of Cherry Blossoms is a profound, soulful book. Simple and practical but also expansive, it offers wise instruction about how to create a garden that facilitates contemplation. But it does much more than this. It invites readers into serious reflection about how to enter more deeply into life, how to cultivate true awareness of the living world and of oneself as part of the larger whole. This is the transformative vision at the heart of this beautiful, precious book.”