Like life, a garden is all about the journey.

Just ask Kevin Warren, a professional photographer who's traveled the world shooting exotic locales. Yet, to him no place is more enticing than the slice of paradise he's spent two years carving out of a Sandy Springs hillside. His garden is a haven from the frantic pace of project deadlines and flight schedules. There, Warren fulfills his artistic fantasies while escaping stress in a Japanese-style retreat so peaceful that few visitors ever want to leave.

Joey Ivansco/Staff (ENLARGE)

JOEY IVANSCO / Staff ÒTraditionally, Japanese gardens are pathways on a journey,' says photographer Kevin Warren. 'So I've set up little zones and nooks for luring you from one space to another.'

Joey Ivansco/Staff (ENLARGE)

Photographer Kevin Warren takes a break at the gate to the garden, which includes a sculpture by Ivan Bailey.

"Traditionally, Japanese gardens are pathways on a journey," the 43-year-old says. "So I've set up little zones and nooks for luring you from one space to another."

Several things inspired Warren to create the Asian getaway — his travels, a contemporary house and the overwhelming desire to form a refuge for him and his busy neurologist wife, Dr. Helen Mayberg.

"Gardening is just so therapeutic," he says. "And being the artsy type, I'm extremely hands-on."

Yet nothing prepared him for gardening in the South after the couple moved to Atlanta four years ago from Toronto. The backyard was mainly wooded — with a few azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons — and one big clay slope with a small retaining wall built of decaying railroad ties. "I found 17 copperhead snakes in the first two years we were here," he says.

What drew the couple to Sandy Springs was the modern house, which had won an American Institute of Architects design award. Warren immediately envisioned the simple, clean lines of an Asian garden for complementing the home.

"I thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool to do a Japanese garden with a Zen area here and a waterfall and koi pond there,' " he recalls.

Bob Lytle of Cascade Design helped Warren design a plan that makes extensive use of boulders and stacked-stone walls for forming three terraces. A screen of Japanese cedars was added to create privacy, and an old greenhouse was replaced by a small pavilion with a wine cellar underneath.

Warren designed each terrace with a different function in mind, each becoming less formal as they extend from the house. The upper one holds a long rectangular lap pool, alfresco kitchen and entertaining area. The next features a koi pond and waterfall nestled beside the pavilion, which he later enclosed on two sides to reflect the water's sound. And a third terrace, accessed by "floating stairs," includes an arched bridge and dry streambed that flows among native azaleas, Japanese maples and a wave of boxwoods. Bluestone is used in all three garden rooms so that the spaces harmonize.

Nothing about the garden, however, is set in stone. "I used the design as a guide, but I'm flexible," Warren says. "It is, after all, just dirt and can be changed."

Take that little pavilion. Warren later decided he wanted a miniature roof garden, so he removed part of the structure to incorporate planting beds, which now spill with various forms of drought-tolerant sedums.

His latest addition is a raised terrace he built with a checkerboard pattern of bluestone tiles paired with squares of Mexican bead pebbles.

"I design the garden like a composition I see through my camera lens," Warren says. "Every time I turn around I see a different picture."

The journey of gardening, he says, is full of them.