Meditation Garden

Our authentic Kyoto-style Meditation Garden is ranked among the top Japanese gardens in North America, and offers a quiet place for contemplation during your journey.

Through a labyrinth of plants, stones, and water, the garden tells an ancient tale of liberation from the everyday concerns of the world. Guests are invited to walk, lay, sit, or meditate in the garden, experiencing its ethereal feel that is unmistakably calming.

A Parable of Enlightenment

The garden is designed as a living sculpture, inspired by the Zen parable of the “Ox and the Ox Herder,” a metaphor for the experience of enlightenment. As you walk about this ten-stage narrative, you’ll encounter various rock and plant features, each carefully designed — down to the sound of water gently descending on stones — to offer a new perspective and opportunity for reflection. Learn the parable.

Decades of Design

The Meditation Garden was designed and built under the direction of Robert Ketchell, a renowned British horticulturalist who has studied landscape design extensively in Kyoto, Japan (where our founder Michael Stusser first met him in the 1970s). The garden was lovingly constructed by the late Steve Stucky, former Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, who helped build all of the gardens at Osmosis from its inception.

Amplify Your Awareness

All of our guests are invited to visit the garden and stay as long as you like, savoring the heightened sense of sensory awareness and inner peace that often follows Osmosis treatments. The impact from your bath, massage, or facial can be amplified many times over by entering this quiet sanctuary.

Learn more about the history, symbolism, and design of these world-renowned gardens in our beautiful book, “Osmosis Gardens.”