Garden

East Asian thinking in many cases centered on the nature of the cosmos, the relation of yin and yang, the place of human beings in nature, and so on. These ideas were at once conceptual/intellectual, artistic, spiritual, and experiential/imaginative, designed to provide the scholar with an opportunity for contemplation of nature like that provided within the landscape itself. Miniature gardens assembled on trays (bonsai) presented the macrocosm in microcosm for the viewer to use to immerse himself in nature or contemplate the Dao.

Sixteenth-century European explorers returned home with exotic plants that were featured in the new scientific botanical gardens. The first botanic gardens were quartered geometric arrangements simulating the "four quarters of the world" with plants in the area allotted to their continent of origin. Twentieth-century botanic gardens specialized in the creation of miniature systems representing whole environments, either cultural (Japanese gardens) or biological, recreating specific biomes (tropical, desert) and capable of sustaining the plants (and sometimes animals) native to them. (The Denver and Brooklyn Botanic Gardens have both types.) In the twenty-first century zoos (formally known as "zoological gardens") have started re-creating the topography and native vegetation of the animals in their collections, thus becoming more like gardens.