A Contemplative Garden takes visitors on a symbolic journey through "The Garden of the Soul's Second Spring," a Chinese garden designed and implemented as a demonstration garden for the 1996 Southeastern Flower Show.

Upon entering this model of a Chinese scholar's garden, visitors take a metaphorical journey through China's Ancient Pattern of Life, an arrangement of five animals represented by landscape materials. The landscape design of the Atlanta-based firm Planters' "Garden of the Soul's Second Spring" incorporates the principles of Feng Shui-- the Chinese art of placement-- to show how natural objects are strategically positioned in harmony with one another. A round portal, the Moon Gate, beckons visitors into the garden, its circular shape denoting both the "whole" and a "hole"-- all or nothing-- principle prominent in Chinese philosophy. Appreciable both individually and as a complete work of art, a tour of the garden relates five chapters of a beautiful story, concluded when visitors reach the point to reflect back upon the garden as a whole.

At the center of this garden stands the black tortoise represented by a T'ing pavilion, constructed of vintage timber and 250-300-year-old carved red pine doors from Yunnan; modeled after the Chinese-preferred location for a home-- nestled like a turtle in a shell halfway up and into a mountain-- the tortoise symbolizes security and safety, a vantage point in life. To the left lies the crouching tiger, a mound of Tai-Hu Rocks, the symbol of power and strength. To balance him on the right arises a stand of tall, lofty bamboo-- the Green Dragon who relies on wisdom and intellect as his course of action. Straight ahead appears the Red Phoenix, in the form of Chinese redbud, which symbolizes the "pretty view'-- man's goals and aspirations for the future. And the path that leads to those goals, the stream of water represented by a Yellow Snake, flows a pure source of rejuvenation for the soul.

Jeremy Smearman combines his degree in Landscape Architecture with his expertise in garden design to plan creations that reach greater depths of meaning than just aesthetics alone. Believing that "if we have the proper environment and something pleasant to reflect upon, we are more productive and creative in our work-- we are simply better at it," he used native Chinese plants and materials to illustrate the Chinese belief in the rejuvenating power of both water and the season of Spring (birth is the soul's first spring) in "The Garden of the Soul's Second Spring."