A red bridge across a lily pond, weeping willow trees, meticulously raked gravel and glistening moss - we do love a Japanese garden.

"Borrowed scenery" gardens make use of the surrounding landscape in order to enhance their own features. The scenery borrowed may be mountains, lakes, a distant volcano - even a manmade structure such as a samurai castle - and the general effect is to make the garden seem spacious whilst integrating it with its surroundings.

Called kare sansui in Japanese, Zen gardens are famous the world over for their meticulously raked, white sand and judiciously placed rocks. These gardens (the most renowned of which is Ryoan-ji in Kyoto) were originally designed to aid Buddhist monks in meditation, and the rocks in the sand are supposed to represent islands in the sea.