Washington Park Arboretum’s Japanese Garden invites a change in perspective. Nestled behind weathered gates and located off busy Lake Washington Boulevard are more than three acres filled with gently rustling plants, flowing water and gravel paths that rise and fall within the landscape.

“They do try to mimic the traditional Japanese gardens,” said longtime arboretum volunteer and UW alumna Helen Santibanez.

Common in Japanese gardens, she said, is the use of borrowed landscape, or using neighbor’s trees or far-away mountains as a backdrop, contributing to the sense of an “endless garden.”

“When you go there, change your scale,” Santibanez said.

A gravel path runs around the garden, with other paths allowing visitors to experience elevation changes or, essentially, changes in scale. Stairs guide visitors up to see how the garden interacts with the trees and landscape of the surrounding arboretum, or down to the distinct and spare elements of the garden.

Juki Iida, a designer of many other Japanese gardens, traveled from Japan in 1960 to supervise the progress of the garden. After selecting granite boulders from the Cascade Mountains, he arranged them throughout the space, along with various trees and plants, from cherry trees and Ginkgo bilobas to pines, ferns and mosses.

Even with the traffic rushing outside and construction on a new gatehouse, the garden retains a sense of tranquility. Rushing water from two streams that trickle down the hillside to converge into a lake drowns out sounds from touring school groups. The crunch of gravel underfoot calls attention to the presence of the earth, so often lost under a blanket of pavement. Exploring the garden becomes a walking meditation. It allows one’s mind — so often crowded with an urban hubbub — to slow and expand into the cool, green space.

Rising up from the lake, after passing over either the earthen bridge of stones, Dobashi, or the wooden plank bridge, Yatsuhashi, are stairs to the Kobe lantern. Screwed into the weathered stone is a plaque that says: “May the Light shine Everlastingly upon the Friendship between Kobe and Seattle.” A gift from the people of Kobe, Japan, to its sister city of Seattle, the 3 1/2-ton granite lantern was donated in 1958, but is almost 200 years old.

The garden holds other surprises: the curved white and orange shapes in the darkness of the lake water are Koi fish. Every so often, a luminescent fin breaks the surface, sending ripples across the water to lap gently on the island in the middle, called Turtle Island because the reptiles laze on it to sun themselves. It looks somewhat like a larger Bonzai garden, with its small, ornamental trees and arranged stones. Along the shore of the lake is a Betula Pendula, or European White Birch, planted by Crown Princess Michiko of Japan in October of 1950. The tree has slender branches, with thinner ones radiating out from rounded knobs that grow along their length, reminiscent of the wheels of a bicycle.

Farther along the path is the Roji, or Tea Garden, which encloses the Arbor of the Murmuring Pines Teahouse. The building is a reconstruction of the original, which was a gift from the citizens of Tokyo and burnt down in 1973. The Urasenke Foundation Seattle Branch — its parent foundation is based in Japan — offers demonstrations, programs and a college course in Chado, or The Way of Tea, through the UW. The foundation funded the construction of the teahouse to act as a classroom for the course.

Mary Nagan, who has volunteered since 1993 and works as a tour and volunteer coordinator, said UW students come to the teahouse for Art History 317, Chado: Japanese Aesthetics. One class of UW Bothell students who took the class got more involved than most, she said.

“The last day, they all showed up in full kimono dress,” Nagan said, adding that the instructor helped them properly arrange their obi, or traditional sash.

“It’s a captivating place,” she said of the garden and her 15 years working there. “It grabs you and doesn’t let go.”

Reach reporter Erinn Unger at features@dailyuw.com.