Since ancient times, the Japanese have been garden lovers. For them, a garden is a secluded retreat where they find spiritual refreshment beside peaceful waters and living trees.
The whole concept of Japanese gardening derives from nature. Trees, shrubs, rocks, and water are used to suggest a natural landscape. When ornamental accessories are introduced, they seem an inherent part of the garden.
Fences, gates, lanterns, and water basins made of stone, wood, or metal are weathered and aged to blend harmoniously with nature.
Walls and fences are planned with care to ensure the privacy that the Japanese love so well and to seem an integral part of the garden landscape.
Japanese Garden Design
Most Japanese gardens are designed around a central theme and reflect the owner’s taste. Every detail is planned on paper.
The pond, stream, fences, gates, steppingstones, boulders— whatever is to go in the garden is sketched to scale.
Then, the materials are assembled—large trees, heavy stones, and growing plants. Once begun, the garden is completed quickly. Six weeks after planting, the garden looks like it had been there for many years.
Many of the gardens are on two levels—a flat central area covered with gravel, natural earth, moss, grass, or water and an elevated bordering area where rocks, trees, shrubs, and fences add variety and height.
Stepping Stones laid in varied patterns usually divide the flat surface and lead from one point of interest to another.
By placing rocks, water, plants, and trees in perspective, Japanese landscape gardeners often create the illusion of greater space than the garden covers.
Here and on the next six pages are photographs by Tatsuo Ishimoto, taken in Japan, showing many of the elements that can be part of a Japanese garden.
Fences And Gates
A Japanese home and garden is designed as an integrated whole, with its surrounding fence or wall treated as an important part of the landscape design.
The outer wall not only ensures privacy but determines the shape of the enclosure and provides a background for the planting.
Within its boundaries, smaller fences divide the garden into separate areas.
The outer wall of a Japanese garden usually suggests strength. The outer gate, too, is often massive, with a gabled roof or other ornamental feature.
Such a wall completely shuts out the busy world beyond and provides a background for the trees and shrubs that border the garden.
Inside, the fences that divide the garden may be quite simple, suggesting friendly informality.
The path from the main gate to the house entrance is usually bordered by a fence or planting that entirely screens out the rest of the garden. This path is often an interesting feature with an unusual arrangement of stepping stones or a fence of particular beauty.
Japanese landscape gardeners are adept at converting a straight path into a walk of winding charm with stepping stones and artful planting.
Paths Are of Many Patterns
The garden walk, from the outer gate to the house entrance, is an important feature of every Japanese garden.
In Japan, the garden path is usually made of stepping stones, granite slabs, or stones and pebbles laid close together in interesting patterns.
Such carefully planned and decorative walks lead from one point of interest to another. Fences and plants are placed along the path in such a way as to lead on to see what lies beyond.
Japanese gardeners show great ingenuity in using stones, wood, and pebbles to design beautiful paths that are harmonious with their surroundings.
Today, as in the past, stones—from small pebbles to huge boulders—are still favorite materials in making Japanese gardens. But today, concrete is sometimes used underneath the stones in a garden path to set the pattern.
Lanterns Have a Place
Since the charm of Japanese gardens depends on their fidelity to nature, very few ornamental objects are introduced. The man-made ornaments most often seen, lanterns and water basins, usually stone, were originally placed in Japanese gardens for everyday use.
Today, lanterns are used more for decoration than for light, but always where it would be natural to use illumination—at a turn in the path, for instance.
Lanterns are always made of weathered material, usually stone or metal, aged outdoors until it blends harmoniously with the earth, rocks, and foliage of the garden.
Water Basins
Among the few ornamental features in a Japanese garden, stone water basins, like stone lanterns, are commonly seen.
Both were introduced to fill a real need. In old Japan, the water basins were allowed to wash their hands before entering the house and supplied water for the tea ceremony.
Today, most basins serve only for decoration. Generally speaking, there are three kinds of stone water basins found in Japanese gardens.
In one, the water drips into the basin from a hollow bamboo stem or wooden spout. In another, the water bubbles up from the bottom. The third kind is the most primitive: water is brought into a container and poured into the basin.
Grow Miniature Trees in Just One Year
The traditional Japanese bonsai technique is slow and tedious. It involves careful wiring, pruning, potting, and repotting. Why not a simplified bonsai with results in the first year?
With this in mind, I went to work. By selecting trees and shrubs with interesting shapes and sizes, either in pots or cans from a nursery or collected from the wild, I found it possible to start with a plant that looked as though it had had years of shaping and pruning by the traditional bonsai methods.
I put the results of my experiments in a book, The Art of Growing Miniature Trees, Plants and Landscapes.
The container’s shape, size, and color should contribute to the esthetic harmony of the whole.
Plants from a gallon can or 8-inch pot will usually fit a container 7” inches wide, 11” inches long, and 3 inches deep. Flowering and fruiting trees and bamboo prefer deeper containers.
Except for occasional display days inside your house, your bonsai should stay outdoors. If you have ice and freezing weather, water in the morning so that all water will be absorbed before nightfall.
Place straw, hay, or similar material in the container to prevent container cracking and roots freezing.
44659 by Tatsuo Ishimoto