I missed this question entirely. The photo is very nice, I like the effect. Almost any wood except treated lumber or a soft wood like redwood or cedar would be good. The charring would work better if it is done slowly. Lay the wood out on a level surface and apply a layer of dirt on top of it. Use about 1 1/2 to 2 inches at most. Build a fire on top of this soil and allow coals to form. Once you have a good amount of coals, bank it by shoveling ash lightly on top. You can use soil as well. The idea is to keep the coals going without allowing so much air it produces flame. Keep the coals going for several hours. The longer you can keep it going the better as it uses up oxygen and volatiles in the wood. What is produced is a kind of Charcoal. Some wood blackens more than others and some of the wood will distort. Green wood will char but not burn like older wood. What you are doing is replacing wood with carbon which will not decay the way wood will in contact with water. It appears the wood in the picture has not been treated to go very deeply. I expect they don't need it to last for more than a few years. The part that has been carbonized is fairly fragile and brittle so don't carbonize the wood entirely through. Another way to char wood is to lay it above the coals but not touching them. You have to keep an eye on it to avoid the fire from catching hold and it must be turned frequently. A third way to do it is to stack bales of hay with the wood laid between bales. Ignite the bales all around. Once the bales are burning, cover the bales with more bales. An alternate to additional bales is to use sandy soil. The object is to form coals and raise the temperature greatly but never allowing the bales to start flaming which will cause the wood to burn rather than just char. This is how Raku pottery is fired. This is not a project that can be set up and left alone. You must always have someone there in case the whole thing gets too much oxygen and bursts into flame. Always have water hoses ready and waiting. If sparks are flying there is too much flame some where. You can spray enough water in a fine mist to douse the flames but not the coals. Do not let it get away from you. Check your local fire codes or ask if there is an area where you can burn safely. A fourth method which is fairly quick and not as hazardous but doesn't produce as much deep carbon is to flame each board with a blowtorch. Keep water handy to extinguish any fire. Use welders gloves. The water inside those boards reaches the boiling point. Don't stack the scorched boards. They could develop a flame. A good way to quench any flame when a board is finished is to douse it in a water barrel. There are a ton of safety precautions when you are doing a project like this. See what your local fire department says. If you go ahead, make sure you have a competent helper. The only one I would attempt by myself is the blowtorch method. I recommend using welders gloves for protection from burns. The wood can become extremely hot. This is not a project to do around idiots and children. It must be done far away from houses, trees or other flammable materials. It may not even be legal where you live.

Bog Andromea ROCKS! I need some. Look at how weird the blossoms are. Neato. Perfect height. I just "planted" a rock. It would be great beind the rock. Nell, thank-you for the evergreen daylily list. That is a great list, and I prefer evergreen plants as I tend to dig around a lot in the winter and then wonder what the heck things are under there!! Do you have Moontraveller daylily? I recieved mine from a gal who used Moontraveler as her "handle" here some years ago. It's got oldfashioned daylily traits. It's mainly evergreen, has HUNDREDS of yellow flowers, and re-blooms like the dickens if watered and fed. I have mine on a slight slope which floods when it rains, but is well drained enough not to rot them out. It's a little known but fab daylily! This, and I'm not much of a daylily fancier (although I admit, I have quite a few now. I keep growing them from seed!!) Great suggstions. I put some cast iron plant back in the corner (near the stairwell the pond sits near) too. It's a good back drop. I added a small trellis and pink japanese daylilies for temporary height until the gardenia gets taller and fills in. Evergreen plants and shrubs mean less digging around in the pond for gucky foliage. GGG

Relax Edzard, this is southern Calfornia, dude. jxbrown, been there , done that in SoCal. You see a lot of your type of 'motif' in SoCal and there are plenty of ways to work with it that suits your personality, budget and over all outlook on the whole gardening thang. I feel the most important aspect about your newly acquired property is to not lose track that this is no longer somebody else's garden , but yours to do with as you wish. If you choose to keep this garden going as it has been tended to in the past there are plenty of people to assist you in this area. Go to one of the monthly Cal Hort meetings and bring pictures and information about your garden. There is usually about 60 or so people at the meeting ( plus or minus depending on the topic of the speaker ) and someone there can point you in the right direction in regards to someone located locally who can assist you. From the sounds of it, ( and from my experience in living in SoCal and seeing this common type 'motif ' ) it does not appear to be any monumental historical work of art that belongs under the conservationship of a Hysterical Historical Society or the Garden Conservancy. If it was, there would already be a committe set up to meet and greet you about your garden. This style of landscape was and still is very popular with the mid century so. Cal architecture. Alot of people whether they were Japanese or not planned a Japanese inspired looking garden. Thousands of these gardens exist today and thousands have undergone transformations over the years. There are a myriad of ethinically diverse gardeners in S. Cal . that can assist you in taking this garden into its next phase. To wait a full year or 'a full cycle of seasons at a minimum before changing anything!!' is a tad bit over dramatic , especially in a temperate environment such as ours , where in just a couple of months one can lose control over their garden if it is not maintained. Give Cal Hort a try, chances are high that if your garden has some sort of notoriety that someone there will be able to help you by pointing you in the direction that you want to go with it. You'll also network with a bunch of gardeners who know who's who and what their specialty is, so you'll can interview and choose someone to work with that has the correct skills if that is the direction you choose to make for your new garden.

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.