One hears a lot these days about over-stressed students, and campus counseling centers have the logs to prove it. St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, offers traditional counseling services, to be sure, but now it offers something else -- a Japanese-style Zen garden on campus, a space for quiet reflection.
The North Country Japanese Garden at St. Lawrence, located in the inner courtyard of Sykes Residence Hall, was formally dedicated in June in a ceremony led by a Zen master.
The garden, which opened in the fall of 2008, serves as a learning laboratory and a place for quiet reflection. It is called Kitagunitei, which means "the North Country garden," and is based on a design made by several students who visited Zen gardens in Kyoto, Japan, in the summer of 2006 as part of a class project and research grant.
The garden has four quadrants, including a traditional dry landscape garden like the type that would be found at a Zen temple; a "strolling garden"; a dry stream; and a moss garden.
It is intended for use as a "living classroom," for the humanities and the sciences. The rocks were selected for their relevance to the geological sciences; the mosses and other plants are of interest to biologists; and the garden itself is used by philosophy, religious studies and other academic departments and programs to learn about East Asian aesthetics.
In addition, the garden has symbolic association with the North Country and the Adirondacks, as many of the plantings and rocks come from local sources.
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