In Japanese bontei means tray garden. It is an old word — not in most dictionaries — and I have resurrected it because it suits these new, modern tray gardens perfectly.

There are many traditions in East Asia of presenting stones and plants on trays or in ceramic pots. In Japan there are four — bonsai, bonkei, bonseki, and suiseki.

Bonsai (tray-plantings) feature carefully pruned plants; Bonkei (tray-scenery) use a combination of pruned plants, stones, and/or sand to create a landscape scene; Bonseki (tray stones) do the same with stones and/or fine white sand on a black lacquer tray; Suiseki (water-stone) are unusually shaped, polished stones that mimic mountain scenes.

All of these traditions express the beauty and rhythms of nature in highly abstracted form, capturing the sense of reflection one feels in wild nature in the space of a tray. My bontei begin within that tradition but broaden the scope to include new materials and philosophies the way modern gardens do.