Product Description

Innovative and exciting approaches to garden and landscape design are found in the work of Martin Mosko, a landscape architect and Zen teacher working in the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado. Mosko's work incorporates traditional Japanese garden design, mandala dynamics, and other Eastern cosmological concepts. Although embracing many traditions, his work is nonetheless strikingly original and both bold and subtle.

Mosko explains how to deploy the materials of the garden so that their outer arrangement reflects the inner mind. The chief paradigm he uses is the mandala, a symbolic picture of the ideal world used in some form in many of the world's cultures. Rocks, streams, plants, paths, and structures of the garden each take their place in the mandala as one of its five elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space. The means to produce a balance of these elements is the mind conditioned by meditation and a clear understanding of its own nature: Inner harmony is expressed as outer beauty.

Mosko's approach to landscaping transforms middling and deflated or tepid areas into spots of majesty and magic; it can be employed in both large and small dimensions, and lends itself well to creating such spaces for both city and suburban dwellings. After explaining theory and method, the book leads us into five of Mosko's gardens, each alive with the energy and excitement he brings to his designs. Although located in different parts of the country and created in different styles, each garden is infused with intangible but clearly felt spirit.

This beautiful book is a resource for those who desire to create a contemplative garden or to better understand what it is to follow a contemplative path; it will be of interest to landscape architects and designers, anyone interested in the fusion of East and West in cultural expression, and garden lovers everywhere.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52697 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-01
• Released on: 2003-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 176 pages

Review
Landscape As Spirit is a very special book about garden making... -- Dr. Gert Groening, Berlin University of the Arts

Mosko is a magician whose creations are spaces of great meditative power and innocence. -- Panayoti Keliatis, Curator of Plants, Denver Botanic Gardens

This is the only garden book that I have read from cover to cover. -- Herb Schaal, FASLA Principal and Vice President, EDAW

Review
"Drawing upon a combination of Occidental and Oriental garden wisdom, Martin perceives the garden as a mandala, and creates meditative spaces where the spirit can play."—Gert Groening, Ph.D., Berlin University of the Arts "Mosko is a magician whose creations are spaces of great meditative power and innocence. His gardens reassure us that nature and mankind are, perhaps, really one after all."—Panayoti Keliatis, Curator of Plants, Denver Botanical Gardens

From the Publisher
What is a contemplative garden and how do we create one from the ordinary materials of life? That is the central question answered in this book, both in text and in more than 150 full-color photographs. It explores the means by which we can express our inner harmony as outer beauty.

Ordinary landscape design has lost its dimension of magic, and its true connection to the natural world. Based on over 30 years of garden-building experience and decades of spiritual practice, the authors suggest an alternative basis for design. Their paradigm is the mandala, an imagined reality and physical shape that appears in the art and myth of many of the world's cultures

Drawing on both Oriental and western philosophies, the book describes an entirely new way to think about garden design. It leads us into the landscapes designed by Martin Mosko, a Zen priest and landscape architect, worlds of sensual delight that are complete in themselves. Each is filled with the peace and harmony that reflects their integration of the materials used with an exceptional plan.

Whether you have a small urban courtyard or a large yard, the ideas presented here will inspire your heart and imagination. Those who want to take their design talents further will also find a novel way of thinking about space, energy, and the elements.

Customer Reviews

A spiritual and visual delight
Mosko is a Zen teacher and Landscape Architect and this book seeks to explain his philosophy by showing and describing how the teachings and practice of both disciplines relate to each other and with the external world.

Most people when they think of Zen and gardens can only think of the immaculate stone and gravel gardens of Japan. Mosko shows that the true understanding of the basic principles of harmony and balance leads to the creation of gardens that delight the eye and the soul.

Taking each element of the garden individually, Mosko explains the spiritual balance between the opposites and the harmony of that balance which, when translated successfully into a real garden, results in an immediate sense of 'rightness' when the garden is experienced. This 'rightness' is beautifully captured by Noden's photographs. The testament to Mosko's brilliance is that the gardens are 'right' for a spectrum of clients not just 'right' for Mosko. The superficial disparity between The Adobe and Flowers in Space lessens the closer you look and you can see the underlying principles of harmony and balance are exactly the same for both.

The beauty of this book for me is that I have found it wildly instructive and inspirational despite having little or no knowledge or understanding of 'Eastern' religion. I found that certain phrases and design concepts would arise in my mind long after I had read the book, infusing me with a desire to express those thoughts in my work.

This book is a must for anyone considering a contemplative garden and a very worthy reference for anyone wanting to design a garden of any sort.

Landscape as Spirit
In this time of shortening days when everything but us hurry up humans is sensibly quieting down, what a pleasure and a treasure to sit down in a comfy armchair and open this book. Turning the pages is stepping into a contemplative garden and wandering the paths. Letting the colors and shapes and scents and sounds take you in. A beauty feast - massaging your worried mind, snatching speedy thought, soothing your bustling spirit.
And when, a timeless while later, you close the book and stand up in your feet again, you are changed.
Restored, refreshed and more in love with life.

How does a book do all this?
I don't know.

That is part of the delightful mystery and what I love about it.

Clearly, these two authors have been having a good time. Working hard, paying attention in their own lives to what it is that creates harmony and balance. Playing with rock, water, plants, and light. Listening deeply to the voices that seem to encourage us to stop arguing with reality and relax back into our natural sanity. Now, with gorgeous photographs and wise words, they are sharing with us what they've discovered along the way.

I suggest "reading" Landscape as Spirit once through just for the images. Turning the pages slowly and letting the gardens enter and speak. Then, a second time, for the words - inspirational and practical, for the professional gardener and layperson alike.

Thank you to Mosko and Norden for what you have given birth to and your generosity of spirit in offering it out into the world.

Extraordinary insights
This book is remarkable in at least three regards. First, it is so finely produced that we, as readers, can actually feel our way into the gardens it is showing us. Second, the principles of garden-making it offers us are profound, simple and flexible: we can see how the Mosko gardens emerge from them, and how our own might too. Third, and most unusual, it is deeply spiritual, coming from years of meditative practice in the Zen and Tibetan tradtions, as well as in unnamed native traditions of spirit. In the deepest sense this book is beauty as instruction.