The fundamental nature of the Oriental garden lies in the re-creation of nature within the garden's boundaries. Most people are familiar with the classic example of the raked sand and rock composition, in which the rocks form islands within a sea of raked gravel, with the gravel breaking as waves on the rocks.

Although China and Japan have some of the richest, natural floras in the world, only a relatively small range of plants are used in traditional gardens; this is largely because these gardens were conceived by poets, artists, and scholars rather than botanists or gardeners. Planting is limited and reserved, with each shrub or tree having a meaning or symbolic place in the overall composition.

The concept of an Oriental 'dry' garden, with its contrasting surfaces of stone, rock, cobbles and gravel, lends itself to perfectly to gardens all over the world.