A Response To Nature
#Nature seems. To have
been touched just lightly by human hands in this garden. A Southern Indica
azalea and a flowering plum provide brief seasonal color among black and
evergreens. More and more, Americans are looking to the Japanese garden for
inspiration in their own garden making. It is not surprising that the Japanese
garden-a tranquil sanctuary for contemplating nature-has a strong appeal in our
modern world.
THIS chapter is designed to help you conceive,
plan, and construct a Japanese-style garden suited to your site and your own
needs. You will be introduced to the spirit of the Japanese garden, then led
through every process and techniques for conceiving, planning, and building one
of your own.
The first chapter discusses the uniquely Japanese concept of
the garden’s relation to nature, a concept that has influenced the Japanese
garden through its centuries of development, and does, still, today. The five
basic styles are described in a historical context. The essential background
information supplied in this chapter will prepare you for the lessons of the
book and for the challenge of adapting Japanese gardens to American needs.
Later chapters examine key design principles and components
of the Japanese garden. Step-by-step instructions are presented for choosing
and building the garden and for selecting and maintaining plants, including
bonsai. Also included is an examination of a Japanese garden that is
beautifully suited to its American context.
Throughout the chapter, the message of this opening chapter
will be kept before you: The Japanese garden-or the American garden with
Japanese spirit-is a living response to the natural world, which includes
people themselves.
NATURED AND THE JAPANESE GARDEN
In early Japanese history, the garden was no more than an
area enclosed by stones, a straw rope, or a fence. The ground inside was
sacred; the ground outside, profane. Over time, this garden has been elaborated
on, diversified, and refined, but the original concept endures: the Japanese
garden remains a place apart, where art and nature collaborate to create
serenity. In the ancient Shinto religion, gods were nature spirits, so the
Japanese people’s perception of the garden as a place to worship nature is not
surprising. Whether it is a postage-stamp-sized court yard or balcony, or a
spacious stroll garden, in every hour and season the Japanese garden offers the
quietude of the natural world..
In Japan, a garden is neither a slice of raw nature enclosed
by a wall, nor an artificial creation that forces natural materials into
unnatural forms to celebrate human ingenuity. Instead, it is a work of art that
celebrates nature by capturing its essence. By simplifying, implying, or
sometimes symbolizing nature, even a tiny garden can convey the impression of
the larger, natural world.
To what in nature does a Japanese garden respond? The answer
are various. The garden is a response to space and form within nature: to the
landscape itself, the sky above the landscape, the sea around it, and features
within it , such as stones, plants, and streams. It is a response to natural
time: to the shifts in light during the day, the cycle of seasons with their
changing charms, and to the enduring aspects of nature. It is also response to
people, who, as creators and beholders, are themselves an essential component
of nature.
Response to Natural Space and Form
The landscape of Japan is striking, and Japanese gardens
reflect its distinctiveness. The coastline, with its numerous islands, huge
rock forms, and cliffs rising abruptly from the sea, is dramatically rugged.
Wind shapes the trees, creating planes of spare foliage on widely spaced,
sturdy branches. The interior consists largely of steep mountain ranges clocked
with forests and streams and broken by valleys with fields, rivers, and rice
paddies. Japanese garden design was, historically, influenced by the
picturesque landscapes of China, and some gardens still reflect that influence.
Whether the inspiration is Japanese or foreign, a garden typically suggests a
complete, coherent landscape and the subtlest forms, patterns, and unities
within it. Successful Japanese gardens are created by practiced, keen observes
of nature.
Response to Time in Nature
A garden may respond to the passing of time in various ways.
The progress of a day is reflected by skilled use of light so that, for
example, in the early morning the sun illuminates a group of large, mossy rocks
with their nimbus of rock fern. At midday the sun lights a seasonal accent of
evergreen clematis flowering atop a fence or a snow-covered lantern nestled
among low evergreens. In early afternoon the sun dapples an earthen wall or a
mossy plain of pebbles with the cool, playing shadows of leaves or bare
branches. In the late afternoon it backlights the perfect from and luminous
foliage of an old maple.
The garden often responds to the seasons with short-lived
effects that emphasize change and the passage of time. For instance, the
intoxicating but brief display of Japanese apricot blossoms expresses the joy
of earliest spring and the renewal of life. Water lilies float languidly on the
pond in the heaviest heat of summer. A sprinkling of yellow Chinese redbud
leaves on gravel marks the bitter sweet melancholy of autumn. Bare coral stems
of Sango Kaku Japanese maple gleam in
the cold brilliance of winter sunlight and snow, emphasizing icy severity by
providing a startling contrast to it.
The subdued, permanent garden features endure through the
seasons and over the years, making more poignant the seasonal flashes of
colour. Rocks and other major landscape forms and the many evergreen plants,
with their constant foliage, help to form the garden’s backbone and affirm the
continuity of live.
Response to Man in Nature
The belief that people exist as a harmonious part of nature,
not separate from it, and that in their daily lives they need to stay in touch
with wild nature, is deeply rooted in the Japanese character. Therefore, people
have gardens. The proper role of people-in gardens and in nature-is that of
participants, not of conquerors ( as in a landscape reduced to geometric
patterns-the gardens at Versailles, for example) and not of observers.
To remind visitors that people are a part of the natural
order, carefully chosen artifacts are placed throughout the garden: a mossy
lantern, a sunbleached water dipper, a worn stepping stone. Every artifact has
a weathered, natural appearance that makes it fit gracefully into the garden.
To involved visitors in the fact that they are participants
in the natural world, the garden stops short of replicating a landscape. It is
left up to beholders to complete the picture in their imagination and to
experience a simplified landscape as a natural one. When this happens, the
garden has succeeded in involving the viewer most intimately-and has become the
subject of meditation.
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