Niwascape

Niwascape is a Japanese garden that never ends. You sit inside an old temple hall, looking out across its veranda, and the garden drifts slowly past: raked white sand, islands of moss, ponds with stone bridges and koi, stepping-stone paths, a dry stream. Nothing is a recorded video. The garden is drawn in real time as it goes, and it never runs out. There is nothing to do but watch.

FOUR SEASONS
• Spring: fresh light-green leaves, azaleas in flower, cherry petals in the air.
• Summer: deep greens under a strong sun.
• Autumn: red maples, golden ginkgo, bright red dodan shrubs and fallen leaves on the moss.
• Winter: snow, bare branches and yukitsuri ropes over the pines.
Automatic follows the calendar, or you can choose a season yourself.

MORNING TO NIGHT
Morning, day, evening, or night with the stone lanterns lit. Add morning mist at any hour, from light to thick: it gathers near the ground and hides the far hills.

FIVE KINDS OF SCENE
Open raked sand with stone groups (karesansui), moss islands, ponds with islands, bridges and koi, stepping stones leading to a stone water basin, and a dry stream. They take turns as the garden passes.

BUILT ON REAL GARDEN RULES
Fifteen stones in groups of five, two, three, two and three – or seven, five and three – as at Ryōan-ji, and any three stones form an uneven triangle. Straight lines are raked parallel to the veranda, and rings circle each stone group. Trees play their traditional roles: a black pine at the heart of the scene, maples to catch the evening sun. Beyond them, wooded hills are borrowed into the view (shakkei), as at Entsū-ji. Every part follows the rules of Japanese garden design as garden makers and guides describe them.

YOUR VIEW
• Choose how often stone arrangements, moss islands, ponds, stepping-stone paths and dry streams appear.
• On iPhone and iPad, drag with one finger to turn the view, and use two fingers to raise or lower your eye. Turn on "Tilt to move the view" to look around by tilting the device.
• On Mac, drag to turn the view and scroll with two fingers to raise or lower it.
• Show or hide the veranda, change the drift speed, or create a new garden.

A CLOCK TO LEAVE ON
Show a clock over the garden: six fonts, size, opacity and position, white or black, 12- or 24-hour, seconds, and the date written the way your region writes it. "Keep screen on" stops the screen from locking while you watch.

IPHONE, IPAD, IPHONE DUO AND MAC
Made natively for every screen. On iPhone Duo, the garden fills the outer screen and the inner screen, upright or sideways. On Mac, Niwascape runs as a native app.

In English, Japanese, German and French. No ads, no account, no data collected. If you enjoy it, you can leave a tip in Settings.

The words of the garden – karesansui, shakkei, tsukubai and more – explained: https://www.gyuniku.jp/apps/niwascape.php