Gil Maker Photography

Pathways in Japanese Gardens

Pathways help define the Japanese garden, guiding a visitor to important viewing points or features, and are often designed to control the pace of movement or cadence within the garden. This and many other factors create the need for several different forms of pathway design and construction.

In Japan, most ideals are generally divided into the Shin, Gyo and So classification, and garden paths are no exception.   Shin can be translated as formal, Gyo as ordinary, and So as informal. By example, a Shin path could be represented by a nobedan path with its cut and carefully fitted pavers, a Gyo path might be simple steppingstones combined with cut stone, and So would be an ordinary basic path of gravel or packed earth