The Art of Setting Stones & Other Writings from the Japanese Garden

Written for the philosophical gardener (or the gardening philosopher), The Art of Setting Stones teaches readers how to truly see the Japanese garden. Author Marc Peter Keane shows how Japanese gardens are both a microcosm of the natural universe and a clear expression of our humanity, mirroring how we think, worship and organize our lives and communities. Essays include “The Art of Setting Stones,” “Wintergreen,” “Closing the Circle,” and “Boundaries.”

“When Marc Keane describes, with poetry and erudition, the experience of the Japanese garden today, he has no peer.” — Leonard Koren, author of Gardens of Gravel and Sand

“Marc Peter Keane writes eloquently in the meditative tradition of Thoreau’s Walden and Okakura Tenshin’s The Book of Tea. Moss and stones lead his thoughts through the garden and beyond—to life and death, art and nature—and back to settle again in the garden’s stillness.”—Alex Kerr, author of Lost Japan

Marc Peter Keane, a graduate of Cornell University, is an American landscape architect and author. He lived in Kyoto, Japan, for nearly 20 years, and specializes in Japanese garden design. He maintains a design office in Ithaca, New York. He is the author of several books about garden design: Japanese Garden Design, Sakuteiki: Visions of the Japanese Garden, The Art of Setting Stones, and The Japanese Tea Garden. Keane has worked as a lecturer in the Department of Environmental Design at the Kyoto University of Art and Design and at Cornell University, and is a fellow at the Research Center for Japanese Garden Art, Kyoto, Japan, and the Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies, New York.