What all goes into a Japanese Garden

17 years ago

I will be building a new home within the next year and have fallen in love with Japanese style gardens. However I do not know a lot about this style. Just this past sunday I did however buy two Japanese Maples, one has green leaves and the other one has red leafs, the green leafed one is about 4 feet tall now and is very full and bushy just beautiful, the red leafed one is about the same height but not as bushy. The lady at the nursery told me that they both get to be about 20-30 feet tall, but grow very slowly and that I should plant them on the north side of my new home, due to the fact that I live In Louisiana and our summers are just too much for them, so they like the shade. So was just wondering what other kind of trees/plants go good with the Jap. Maples, and yes I will be buying more Jap. Maples in the near future, especially the laceleaf varietys. What kind of rocks, buildings, ponds, bridges, etc... I will have all the room I need at my new home, buying over 5 acres, but would like for my backyard to be Japanese, and the rest of the land to be natural. Any info. would help. Thanks

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Comments (5)

victory_tea2085
17 years ago
Here's a list of books you might consider. Paul

Here is a link that might be useful: books
sarah27-lakeside
16 years ago
Here's a list to help get you started, from the Canadian Gardening book, "Creating a Garden"... *the key is to keep it simple, green is usually the dominant color*
- low-lying ferns, junipers, mugo pines
- crab apple/cherry tree, mountain ash (for added color)
- azaleas, rhododendrons for the summer
- japanese maples (red color for the fall)
- burning bush (fall color) , oregon holly (winter)
- cedar hedge (not for windy, exposed, cold aites)
- wisteria vine(on an arbor/pergola)
- ivy, wintergreen, pachysandra, periwinkle (groundcovers)
I hope this helps... Good luck!
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Good question - I have no idea! My wife knows nothing about gardening, less about Japanese gardens. At the San Francisco Japanese garden, we were standing, overlooking a small pond. She said "it is sooo peaceful". Many japanese gardens have this quality (based mostly on a lot of reading and pictures). But some do not. For example I find some far too cluttered with rocks. I don't see or feel the balance. Maybe I am not trained to understand the subtle balance that exists in the same way that I can't appreciate good music. Rock and Sand gardens. Very interesting - yes. Unusual - yes. Peaceful - not really - not for me. I find them lacking of ?? something. I have spent some time in the far north - the Arctic - where no tree grows. Where no people live. It is at least as peaceful as a Japanese Garden. I get a similar feeling on a quiet day in a North American deciduous forest. Both of these places have a Zen like quality. So a Zen like feeling may be important, but it does not define a Japanese Garden. Westerners, add a pond, a bridge, a stone lantern, and some bamboo and they have a Japanese Garden. Are these icons required? Required may be too strong a word, but I think that without them, a Japanese Garden is much less recognizable. Can you have a tea garden without a building? Some people say a garden has an 'oriental flare or influence'. That usually means none of the icons are there. There might be some racked gravel or a clipped pine - but not much else. Just as important are the missing things - the negative icons. For example - tall grasses, and flowering perennials. So maybe a Japanese garden has three things; a Zen like feeling, certain expected icons, and the lack of unexpected icons.
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It's not something that can be easily expressed in 25 words or less :-) The topic consumes entire books and often a full, dedicated course of study. Japanese garden design 'masters' typically study and apprentice for a number of years before being considered skilled enough to go out on their own. A significant distinction is that there is a complicated philosophy behind Japanese garden design, both with regards to overall garden development as well as with the same degree of intensity to the different styles and to all the individual elements. Much of it is based on the Zen philosophy and the strong connection the Japanese believe we have with nature. And while the style does incorporate many of the same elements as western garden design, it includes several more specialized areas of consideration. Because of that strong connection to nature, Japanese garden design is very hands-on and much more craftsman-like than technical. Japanese garden designers don't use CAD :-) I have never even seen drafted plans........at best just a few quick sketches of a general layout. The rest is designed more or less onsite, reflecting the specific nature of the setting and what materials are available and how they can be best used within that setting to create the designer's vision. This is just barely touching the surface. If you are interested in the subject, then I'd suggest getting one of the excellent texts on Japanese garden design that are available and doing some studying. One that I find to be well-suited to westerners - not too technical but very informative - is Japanese Garden Design by Marc Peter Keane, a landscape architect who is perhaps the leading western authority and practitioner of Japanese garden design.
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sarah27-lakeside
16 years ago
Oops, sorry, I forgot to add structures...
- water is a common feature (small pond, bamboo fountain) with koi fish, water lilies, grasses
- add rocks that look natural (like they've always been there)assorted sizes, flat rocks
- a stone bench
- a winding path(gravel or rock path)
- dry stone creek bed
- a small bridge over the dry creek bed
- Stained, not painted decking and /or fencing
- a stone lantern
And if you really want to go all out...
- a basin set on a grouping of rocks (tsukubai) is common outside ceremonial sites in Japan, and is used by visitors for washing hands before entering a sacred space...
- bonsai trees are great for raised bed focal points (almost all shrubs can be 'trained' to be bonsai, if you can not afford the real deal (some can be fairly expensive)
Japanese gardens are based on balance: yin and yang (light and dark, mass with space, vertical with horizontal)
Take your time, a garden is never truly finished...
ebb_tide
16 years ago
thank you sarah27, you're inspiring me!
laag
16 years ago
Thought. Lots of thought. It is not the "what", but it is the "how".

We've all seen empty fields of gravel a small grouping of rocks that look wonderful. I'd suggest that it is neither the gravel or rocks that will duplicate the success of the garden. It is how they are placed and balancing of the mass of rocks against the expanse of gravel, negative space vs. positive space, etc, ...

I'd suggest that it is not the stone lantern that is inspiring in the garden, but the mass and texture of it balanced against everything around it.

My belief is that there is simply a different approach to balance that is the basis of Japanese gardens. It is the ability to balance with unlike objects, forms, color, and texture. Sometimes only one or two of these are present, but sometimes all of them and more are. The ability to assess the visual weight of these things and then to use that qualitative judgement to form compositions that on a whole are very balanced and restful is what I think is at the heart of it.

Think about acheiving balance between a 2 ton boulder and feathers. Once that is done, throw in a tree. Do you need to move the rock? Maybe add or take away some feathers? Somehow the equivalent is done in the many forms Japanese gardens take that I can recall.

The cultural icons certainly make a link that everyone will recognize, but a Japanese garden can be recognized without a lantern, bamboo, or a moon gate. I would also suggest that the presence of those items does not a Japanese garden make.

I'm not trying to cause a firestorm as it seems from reading some posts there has been problems with that. That is just my take on what the "thing" is about Japanese gardens.

Some are extremely complicated with all kings of plant forms, sizes, texture, and color (sometimes lots of contrasting color). There may be dramatically undulating landform. There can be water, stone, and wood structures. But it seems that no matter what they have whether simple or complex, it is always restful because it is always balanced.

Our Western cultures tend to lean much more heavily on symetry and/or geometry for balance. We are taught to see numbers, size, and distance to counteract each other. They, the masters of Japanese gardens, apparently see more than that and use it.

What all goes into a Japanese Garden

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victory_tea2085

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