Japanese-style Gardens

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU DO, IT’S THE WAY THAT YOU DO IT

As any teenager will tell you, if you want to be accepted as fashionable or stylish (as in ‘with it’ – in past parlance), you need to do more than just dress up in the latest gear and parade about. You really need to think, be and breath life into the image that you are trying to create.

The same applies to style from another culture and not just in the fashion that affects clothing, but in all artistic endeavours that involves personal expression, which definitely includes garden and landscape design.

Take the style and culture of Japan for instance; you certainly have a head start if you just happen to be Japanese, because the style expresses an underlying ethos of the whole Japanese culture that is just tooThe Tea House,Japanese garden, Compton Acres: The Tea House has a pivotal role in the design of a Japanese garden. Its importance can be lost on Western sensibilities. difficult for most of us to grasp on first encounter. Japanese gardens are therefore not just brightly painted teahouses, red and black fencing, tortured trees, stone pagodas, stepping stones and spitting frogs. This is the sort of thing that the Victorians understood as making a Japanese garden, and much of this style of stuff was created merely to export and to satisfy a bourgeoning demand for more and more exotica for garden ornamentation.

The first real interest in Japanese gardens flourished in the in the late 1800s. It was largely stimulated by the demand for new flowers and plants that came flooding into the country looking for a new home. Unfortunately at the time, the style of garden making in Japan, which the westerners sought to mimic, had reached a cul-de-sac in which there was an over-use of highly coloured ornamentation in a very stylised manner producing an impression of garish kitsch. There was no doubt all this ornamentation did have certain historical and symbolic relevance, but it had evolved away from its original purpose within the garden. Needless to say, people in the west lapped it all up, taking it to their hearts at face value.

It was not really until after World War II that we really had the opportunity to see the perfection that was achieved in the history of Japanese garden design with its climax perhaps in the 15th cent and the subtle change and development that had occurred over the thousand years before it came to us.

FISHY STORY

Japanese garden, Chelsea Flower Show 2002: This Japanese garden designed by Steve Hickling is the only time fish have ever been allowed in a pond at the show.Many people come to the Japanese garden style obliquely through their passion for another hobby, fish keeping. For them as with the Japanese, water is the focal point of the scene. The fish, primarily Carp, are integral to the summer scene in the garden, lending a gentle movement to the stillness. They are a symbol of strength and determination. If you build a Japanese style waterfall, there is a stone at the base of the fall, which is often referred to as the ‘wave dividing stone’. It represents a fish on its journey up the fall where it turns into a dragon; another stone that is otherwise referred to as the ‘water dividing stone’. This, believe it not, is a symbol of a man’s journey through life and the final achievement of his ambition.

The Chinese and the Japanese for have bred both goldfish and carp for centuries. The Japanese originally bred carp or Magoi primarily for eating, but apparently sometime in the 1800s people in the main fish farming area, the prefecture of Niigata, started keeping colourful mutations of these fish as pets and breeding new varieties from them. Although by the 1880’s there were quite a few set varieties, hardly anyone was aware of their existence, even in Japan, until 1914 when a display of them was shown in a Tokyo exhibition in an attempt to promote the welfare of the poor people of the Niigata region. Although it sparked a great deal of interest at the time, economic depression and world wars delayed any global exposure until after World War II. With an infrastructure of rail and air transport then in place these fish that had come to be known as Nishikigoi would be available to everyone all over the world.

‘IN’ and ‘YO’

The Chinese ‘yin’ and ‘yang’ is the Japanese ‘in’ and ‘yo’ and the names of the forces of nature that have to be kept in balance. In the garden, one element like the smooth surface of the pool, ‘in’, balances theThe Japanese Garden, Compton Acres: showing the highly symbolic cranes, pagoda and waterfall. hard stone, ‘yo’. It can get quite complex when you have to consider flat colours, like a sward of green moss, in balance with the billowing greens of the trees and shrubs (basically a balance of form and colour) at the same time as considering the balance of horizontal with vertical, light and shade, movement and stillness and the elements of stone, water and plant life together.

Geometric forms and any sort of geometrical formal balance are out of the question, although natural form and shape are all important. Trees are pruned to a shape or form symbolic of some ideal for that plant or to balance the hard shape of buildings or manmade structures in the garden. Although plants, grasses, moss, or pebbles cover the ground with no bare soil to be seen, flowers themselves are limited mainly to plants that mark the seasons; the azaleas, camellias and cherries in spring; Irises for the summer and the glow of the Maple foliage in the Autumn. The huge range of Japanese flowering plants were generally kept close to main entrance to the house in pots. However there seems to be something inherently Japanese in all indigenous Japanese plants, and in choosing them, in exclusion to plants for other countries, you will find even the most maudlin effort at Japanese garden landscaping acquiring a distinctly oriental air.

ESSENTIAL WATER, ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS

Japanese Garden, Holland Park, Waterfall: The Japanese garden at Holland Park in Central London is one of the best in the UK and it is free to see at any time.Water has been essential to Japanese gardens since the concept of a garden was originally lifted from the Chinese in the 9th century. Even if there is no real water there the element can be symbolically represented with raked gravel. It is there to reflect the beauty of the overhanging trees and it adds depth and space to the area in front of the viewer. Water in a pool is a balancing ‘in’ element to the hard ‘yo’ of the rocks and also any stream or cascade running through or over the rocks.

Islands are important because they were inherited with the original concept from China where the island was the home of Immortal Souls. They also help to hide some of the water from the viewer in a large stretch of water. All of the water must not be visible from any one point suggesting that there is more to be seen.

For the health and clarity of the water, it must never remain static. Traditionally the water garden would be fed by a natural stream and an outlet from the pool would rejoin the original course of the stream. The source of the water must be obscured from view.

Moving water is as essential as the calm reflective pool because it has the power to distract us from our preoccupations. The noise it creates also has the effect of drowning out most other extraneous noise in a calming way. Small ribbon waterfalls are as effective as great torrents.

PRACTICALITIES

For most people there is little inclination to tie themselves to any one form of garden style. Besides that, Japanese gardens require a commitment in time and expense, taking years to mature, if not life timesA Taste of the Orient by Merrist Wood, Chelsea 1995 before the starkness melts into a mellow softness. So most people choose to compromise.
All fish look at home in a Japanese garden, if you can see them. In fact the visual emphasis is often on the fish as they congregate around the oxygen rich area around the base of a waterfall, or the cool shade of a bridge. Plants like marginals and lilies don’t normally figure a great deal in the traditional Japanese water garden, which is probably just as well since if it is Koi that you interested in keeping then they are highly likely to make pretty short work of them. One way of preserving the plants is to make their own torpedo resistant planting beds placed behind the strategic protection natural looking stone.
Also with Koi, an efficient biological filtration system is pretty much essential. If you have the room, the wherewithal and you are starting from scratch, a gravity fed system from bottom drains in the pool would be perfect. This allows you to have the pool completely clear of clutter, with no pumps or piping visible and without the expense, noise and maintenance of external pumps. This can be operating some distance away behind a plant or bamboo screen, whilst the pumps within the filter only have the effort of pump back clean or clear water to the pool.
As long as the shape of the pool is fairly organic, you can get away with edging it with anything. The customary shingle and large pebbles leading up to a lawn of moss may not seem suitable for most domestic situations. Decking is a soft option and balances the effects of a lot of hard landscaping, even reducing the effect of a geometric shape to a pool. The art is in less rather than more, so the impact of certain well placed features or the right kind of containers suitably planted and very little else is all that is necessary to create an oriental balance to even a formal geometric shape. In 1995 a Merrist Wood College creation at the Chelsea Flower Show had. A formal pool of to the right, with a large paving area to left rather than the pool formally placed centre stage. With a few finishing details for the fence and pergola ends, the right plants and colours, although it seemed a hybrid of cultures the effect was nonetheless appealing. So it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it!

Ornaments are useful additions in an appropriate setting.

The lanterns belong to the gardens with footpaths and are there to light your way on your ‘tour’ of the garden. They were originally markers for tombs and graves in the early monastery gardens.

Japanese Garden, Holland Park: Three typical elements of a Japanese garden, an Azalea shows it is springtime, the lantern lights your journey and the drinking bowl allows you to cleanse youself before entering the Tea House.Rocks have their own individual characters expressed in their texture, shape and how they sit. They are never piled up on each other, neither are they placed singly, unless they sit like an island in the middle of a pool. Usually they are in an odd number, grouped in a way that is in harmony with the complete ambience of the garden. They provide permanence and stability amongst the slow change and growth of the tees and shrubs and they were considered the greatest treasures of the garden. Being able to see their true character and to be able to place them in the most appropriate place was an art left to special priests called Ishitate-so.

Stepping-stones or zig-zag bridges over water prevent evil spirits from following you on your journey.

Frogs make a mockery of them as their progress is daunted.

The purifying qualities of water are to be used for cleansing yourself before you enter the Teahouse.

The Teahouse is where you meet your mentor and devoutly perform the ritual of tea ceremony as part of your quest for spontaneous enlightenment. It had evolved from a mountain hermitage that would have been sought out by a member of the ruling elite of the warrior class.

There may be a small stone wrapped up in ribbon on the path. This means you must not pass this point.

Pergolas and archways have their place in Japanese garden art and they can double as supports for screens and shading over the pool.

The boundaries of the garden are hidden by trees and shrubs, but it is helpful to be able to look beyond the boundaries if there is a desirable view to be seen, to try to give the impression that you are in a garden without boundaries. This common technique is called ‘borrowing the landscape’ or ‘shakkei’.

Want to know more? Contact the Japanese Garden Society, Kira Dalton, Groves Mill, Shakers Lane, Long Itchington, Warks, CV47 9QB. Fax: 01926 632787. Website: www.jgf.org.uk

Reading list:

Japanese Gardens by Gunter Nitschke (Taschen: ISBN 3-8228-7633-X)
A Japanese Touch For Your Garden by Seike, Kudo and Engel( Kodasha Int.,ISBN 4770016622)

Create Your Own Japanese Garden by Sawano (ISBN 087040962X)

Gardens of Japan by T Itoh( ISBN 4770023219)

Plant Supplies:

Bamboos from: PW Plants, Sunnyside, Heath Road, Kenninghall, Norfolk, NR16 2DS. Tel 01953 888212. Catalogue was £1.50 – include an A4 sae. Ring to make sure

Acers from: Mallet Court Nursery, Curry Mallet, Taunton, Somerset, TA3 6SY.
Tel 01823 481493.

Meet the owners of these nurseries at any of the big RHS Flower Shows.