I lived in Kyoto, Japan, for about 20 years designing gardens for private individuals, temples and companies. Came back to the States to teach at Cornell University as part of a year-long residency. The year was wonderful — made an exquisite curved teahouse with my students — but when time came to go back to Japan, my family and I realized small roots had grown from each of us into Ithaca's fertile soil. We're still here.

The idea of making tray gardens came a couple years after my return. I had been making models and drawings of experimental gardens, things that I had been imagining but hadn't found a way to create. The designs were often abstract or in some ways more fanciful than the gardens I was building.

I realized somewhere along the way that what I was doing was capturing certain qualities distilled out of gardens — movements, textures or philosophies — and placing them on trays, like offerings, for quiet contemplation.