This post is of a project we undertook in 2004 - in the Spring - for a great couple, Jeff and Denise, and their young red headed kids who were not even arguably cuter than buttons. They were a feature every day, the little guys, and who were, not surprisingly, fascinated by their daily Big Show out back of huge machinery and big fellows moving dirt and rocks all around.
(click on any picture to enlarge)
What 4 year old in his right mind would not dig (pardon the pun) this set up?? Huge and gnarly, all these humongous toys kept them entranced as long as they were awake. Below, for example, is what it looks like when you get 20 yards of topsoil delivered to your house just a few feet from your favorite back window!
This picture is us digging those tiny (not!) channels for irrigation pipes. Hey, you use what you have!
The Story
The home was pretty much Jeff and Denise’s “dream home”. After getting the inside of their place whipped into shape, they then focused outdoors, naturally enough. They had a full acre out back and they wanted to maximize what they could get out of it. They provided me with a laundry list of things they wanted which read something like this:
1.) A running water feature with a creek and small pond. 2.) A platform and an electrical (220V) supply near the water feature for setting up a spa away from the house. 3.) A nice big irrigated lawn with a surrounding pathway for the kids and their trikes and - eventually - bikes and motorized transportation. 4.)A horseshoe pit straight out the back. 5.) A play area for the kids. 6.) Some pathways on the rear hillside. 7.) An upper level patio, very informal, bedded in Decomposed Granite.
They were looking for ways to squeeze the budget which would still allow them to get all the goodies they wanted. The list was long and challenging but I immediately saw the potential in the overall landscape. We would take advantage hugely of the hillsides surrounding the East and Rear sides of the property, using it for our creek and the spa placement. Providing pathways would be easy and interesting and would cut through the landscape in a winding way. Jeff and Denise and I huddled and came up with a reasonable budget. Helpful - no that is an understatement - what swung the deal in favor of total possibility was that Jeff could provide all the machinery we would need. What also helped were his connections regarding trucking and rock suppliers - there being some excavations nearby that had the marvelous rocks you see throughout the property. That brought the budget down so far that suddenly it was all as doable as it could be. So we shook hands and took off on our grand landscaping experiment. It would be fun, especially inasmuch as Denise was at home with the boys and offered her opinions daily and in an unobtrusive and truly cooperative fashion. In the end, she has as much to do with the ultimate look as anyone. I consulted with her often, and as often at my request. She was always a treat, honestly.
Anyway, we began and, once we finished the irrigation issues, and after burying the pipes and backfilling them, we were ready to entertain deliveries of both rocks and soil, both in the 200 yard range as totals. So, here they came:
Once delivered, staging became an increasingly knotty problem. In the picture above you can see us placing rocks in their eventual resting places with the smaller excavator placing them and the larger one picking and separating them just after their arrival. They tended to come in 3 sizes, from humongous 2-3 ton slabs, to medium sized ones from 500-1,000 pounds, to smaller, one man sized rocks. It is actually somewhat tedious at this stage, in a way, although the placing of permanent fixtures is always bracing and challenging. You can never get bored with supplying something permanent for a client - the appearance and selection will be there for ever. Some heavy duty cosmetics here. So, anyway, things began taking some shape. In this picture, both the “upper level patio” and the horseshoe pit have been outlined in boulder placement.
Yes, there is still one huge pile of rocks down there. That is for some detail work as well as almost entirely dedicated to the water feature, which is being scratched out in the picture below. We typically excavate the channel which the water and all acoutrements will follow, then add the liner and, of course, the rocks defining it last.
And there you have your stabndard-average scooped out water course. Next, we make the water feature, starting at the top:
Adding rocks on top of liner is always the single most nerve-wracking part of any large job. One false move with that machine and the rock - and especially this type of “fractured rock” - can poke holes in the liner, the worst possible result. So we operate gingerly to say the least and we also use other pieces of the liner wedged between the new rocks and the liner to protect the all-important liner itself, providing a meausre of security as we worked.
The excavators we like using for these events are amazing tools. You act like a jeweller or watchsmith or something placing one and two-ton boulders as precisely as possible in place. Plus, you always get helpful advice, lol.
Looks like Chaos, don’t it?? ;-) Note also another wonderful development which is the very durable flexible pipe we use as the source. This one was a 4 inch pipe and made the project ten times more do able..
Now just add cement and we’re finally getting somewhere!
So that yields to this:
Next post, we add plants, grass and finish all the paths and stuff. I think you can see the madness all actually had some later-crystallizing plan to it. Thousands did not! Had to say it.
So - with the creek pretty much 80% done, we begin running the water to check the electrical and pump systems and to finish all the detail work in the crevases and in hiding the liner. We also run the water to clear it, of course. The first passes of water collect all the dust and grime from the initial construction phases- all the dust from feet and from spills and from the rocks themselves. Naturally, someone washes off the rocks as well at the same intial phase of the cleaning. We’ll leave it running for just a bit and then grab the end of the hose we saw inserted inside at the top for providing the initial flow and basically empty out all the water, completely, sending it somewhere that can take it all. We’ll refill it with the automatic fill apparatus we installed and work away elsewhere while it clears itself. We’ll repeat this step more than once, looking for that clear water.
(click on all pictures to enlarge)
Here we can see the water’s still running pretty murky, as we will also see in a lower photo. About this time, generally speaking, we are ready - believe it or not - to start planting the plants and running lighting wire for the outdoor lighting system. You can see our ‘12-2′ low voltage lighting cable (above) which we ran to a light under that small falls there. Some wires were also sent through the creek, between the rocks and over to the other side for uplighting trees with.
We also began adding the decomposed granite which compacts well and which will provide the traffic surfaces for the horseshoe pit, seen below leading off from the upper patio area. As well, we are adding “D.G.” to the pathways on the upper hillside which we carved out. We are pretty much at the compacting stage at this juncture. We will pack them, then get them wet and they tend to crust over nicely. In time, they make a perfect bottom.
(Note the “creekebed” drain field above)
Time to start planting! Bear in mind, as exciting as this gets for me, I always see the future in what I put in the ground. Frankly, a newly-planted landscape can look pretty doggone barren when just finished, and especially one this large. I posted a picture below all this that shows us a look at this landscaping 3 years later. Suffice to say, you won’t believe the change. Yes, it is the same place.
OK, so on with the planting and the Green part of the gig:
It’s looking a bit more orderly out there now, don’t you think?
Hey! Here’s the sod! (below) The sod comes on pallets of about 550 square feet each, with about 65 rolls per pallet or so. We lay these suckers one at a time, just like a carpet. While it is an exceedingly reliable “plant”, the grass, since it occupies so much space, is a huge developmebnt towards finishing. It makes everyone’s day, honestly. Grass is the one finishing operation that really brings it all together and points the way downhill. There is much to be done yet, but there is something “final” about seeing the green grass outside after staring at dust and mud for a month or so.
Drainage Issue: It is a tedious chore, getting the grade just right, making sure rainwater and irrigation water all are directed away from the house to somewhere relevant that can conduct it then disperse it - in this home’s case - out to the front street, believe it or not. That’s a long way and we made small sorts of rock-filled creekbeds to do this with. These end up being an added feature, in the end, adding an aesthetic touch to a very functional consideration and neccesity.
Here, we are adding the final pieces, getting ready to trim the edges, roll it all down firmly, then give it its first dose of good watering. We will adjust the sprinklers perfectly at this time and set the clock for a test of it as well. Right now, Hugo is adjusting the radio, a constant need (!) while sodding as everyone must know! LOL, we had some good dance music going on for much of this, I remember. yYes, some of it was Mexican on demand, but I got my time in with some good R & B, too. Sam and Dave and James Brown can do alot for motivation!
Here’s a look from above. What a difference a day makes!
The two colors of the grass were merely different crops, cut at different times. I warned them of this possibility and that it meant zero, in the end. Inasmuch as the grass comes essentially fertilized, it takes about two-three days for the green to really start setting in.
Our remaining work is all “finishing” at this stage. I term applying the irrigation to all the plants as “finishing”, although classically, it’s still construction. But one thing we can get accomplished while setting up the drip irrigation lines and running the appropriately sized pipes and emitters to the trees and plants is that we bury the lines, then rake the dirt - in other words, we finish those areas. This project would not need mulching until some future date, owing to the expense - it was one of the ways we budgeted things - and it turned out delightfully. We were able to use a preemergent herbicide for the first two years and weeds just never got any purchase at all. Jeff and Denise were also able to add plants wherever they wanted quite a bit easier than by dealing with a mulch cover.
Here, below, Romero is adding the emitters to the “main line”, a 3/4″ drip line that he sends a bit of smaller pipe off of with an emitter which regulates the amount of water delivered to the plants roots per hour. The coiled pipe seen in the picture above is this 3/4″ pipe. It goes to every single plant on the property, run off a valve in a timed release. Drip irrigation is the single greatest achievement in landscape technolgy in my recent history. It applies the water exactly where it goes - to the roots - and does not evaporate in the air or cause wasteful watering which is endemic with spray systems. For those who wonder, that’s a Weeping Larch tree beside Romero there, a favorite plant of mine. The Larch is one of only two deciduous conifers in the world. They look amazing in the Spring, when they ‘re-needle’, in a soft green that gets greener. The weeping charactieristic I have always found terrific around water features. “Weepers” are a Steve characteristic.
We also did work on the upper paths, naturally, but in every respect relating to finishing, starting with the top - running the irrigation up there and then bringing it around, we were always working our way out.
Here’s the patio area. The grass is greening up as promised and the line is about to be buried.
Time for the all-impotant Road Testing” of the horseshoe pit. Jeff was not going to be easy to please, and especially with his Father-in-Law as competition. I gave them a break and didn’t compete with them. They got a break without knowing it, lucky stiffs.
He liked it! Well, we were just about finished. Please note the scrawny and tiny little plants all set there looking so lonely and forelorn. Then please look at the picture at the very bottom, 3 short years later.
Meanwhile, guess where our next project was!
Here you go, three years later! Different?
Here’s another look at the more mature place:
In the end, I stood next to Denise as I collected the final check and we had a moment to assess everything - the relations, the progress, the push and pull sometimes, all in respectful ways - and we shared one of the best moments I ever had as a contractor. We hugged briefly, and she spoke of all the guys she would miss (It’s an excellent, proud, professional and nice crew) and how the action would be so slow now for her hyped-up young red heads and how they’d miss seeing us. (It did take a full month to do.). I looked at her and I quietly asked: “Denise, do you like it?”
Denise started sobbing. “God, Steve, I l-l-l-ove it!” she said, tearfully. I looked at her and was just awed. I was dumbstruck, I swear. She was telling the truth and we had shared the deepst sort of history and warmth together in just that moment. I was embarrassed, because I had put a lot into it, myself, and I began tearing up a little myself. Honestly, who wouldn’t??
It was just the best dang thing I ever heard. I’ll cherish that one moment forever. Love you, Denise!
In so many of my designs, I subscribe to a sort of anarchy, I admit. I am a craven lover of color and spice in an outdoor environment and many decisions I make regarding a landscape often take place at a nursery and revolve around what is available at the time. This would be bad if there were some limited supply of plants. However, lol, that is not the case. My primary worry is often how to stay within my own budget! I find spending money on others, in this sense, to be absolutely and totally recklessly fun. This fact has gotten me very “chewed out”, by everyone but the fortunate homeowners who I inflict my addiction to pretty plants on.
Obviously, I have some friends out there!!! I exaggerate here, obviously, and even while there is more than a smidgen of truth to it, if I lost money somewhere, it was long before the plant choices. Anyway, so I admit to some impulsiveness while implementing my designs. Please know, however, that the choices do have some basis in experience with installing landscapes by some excellent and even well-known landscape architects. It was these people from whom I learned the basics.
The above picture, for example, was done with seasonal aspects borne in mind. The Fall colors of this design are only beginning in that shot and deepened with pure color - some really dazzling stuff - all red, orange and yellow to the max. Needless to say, the Spring and Summer colors - with my emphasis on perennials - also shone well. I also include Winters in my landscapes. I use evergreen conifers, pines and broadleaf plants as extensively as possible.
So my real bias is towards “splashes” of color, interspersed with more permanent grounding in the sense of solidity, which I believe “anchor plants” supply - shrubs, trees, even ground covers - that maintain a fastened-down look and structural element of permanence. I also use rocks and art features as equally permanent and which supply that same solidity.
Now, there are other ways to achieve a beautiful landscape - far less riotous and anarchistic as some of these examples of mine. Mass Planting, for example, is a concept I actually like very much and which I actually implement when given a large enough area. Here, for example, is mass planting in the form of trees, a grove of Shirotae Cherries we planted, believe it or not, over an underground parking garage:
Every plant and tree shown in the picture below we actually planted ourselves, maybe 2 weeks to one month prior to this picture. Their huge size made it much easier to “mass plant” inasmuch as so few took up so much space. Nevertheless, they still give the desired effect: a permanent and uni-colored structural base to the looser items which were eventually planted below them. This particular area, looked at from the rear like this, was also strictly mass-planted from this angle. The front was somewhat wilder, containing a waterfall and numerous swaths of perennials and grasses.
Below: Here’s a look from the front, just prior to the placement of all the color I am tempting you to imagine, lol. Dam…….I just found I don’t have those pictures on this computer, so use your imagination. It’s sure purty! Trust me! ;-) The waterfall here, by the way, goes two ways. You can see the falls (barely) on either side as they come down the little rise there……enlarge it.
Anyway, I love points of interest and lots of varying color, all the way through the year.
I just think we all want to enjoy it as it develops as much as when it sits still!
I recently learned how to embed music and videos into posts. I have been a music lover all my life. I have often looked for unique and pleasing forms and genres of music and, fortunately, I have found tons of it out there, long before computers.
This one here - Ethiopian - is something I stumbled upon a while back and I often use it for inspiration. I love the innocence of the piece and all gardeners will enjoy how green the area looks. There is also a remarkable - if simple - stringed instrument being played which I especially love. There is also a Father - Daughter theme I detect too and I am a true sucker for those.
Unfortunately, when whoever made the Youtube video, they screwed up at the 4:43 mark. That’s where the song ends, actually. Feel free to stop it there. You’ll see why, lol.
There is a rough simplicity to this Japanese Garden which belies its age. The steps seen below could have been installed centuries ago and they do indeed represent what is often seen in the most authentic Japanese Gardens in Japan. There is this primitive element that makes it that much more entrancing - a combination of complexity, human creativity and an admixture in all the elements as well of utter simplicity. The dialog never ends at a good Japanese Garden.
(all pictures enlarge on clicking)
Lines such as these below show the superiority of clean lines in garden design performing a good head-clearing function. Once again, simplicity vies with heavy thought for the most outstanding feature and neither wins the battle. That they can coexist so intrinsically inside of one design is a sign of perfection - or as close as man can get to it. These two entryways to homes plead with us to relax as we enter. Small in size, they are also universal in scope. Simple messages redound, allowing all of our thoughts some pleasant room and a very human and gentle tolerance.
Some of the minor features here appeal to this landscaper and designer. Something as simple as this rock edge, separating a path from the vegetation are done in a very tight and artistic manner and in a unique way.
Indeed, some of the pathways here are fabulously interesting while maintaining that same sense of simplicity spoken of above. These rocks are varied in size, yet they mesh perfectly in a primitive, yet appealing and very artistic way. They are just rocks but obviously something more.
This mix of human and natural make for a true sort of spiritually-enhancing amble along paths and into vistas that take us from our normal daily existence and insert us into a real sense of history. Of course, they also take us into good old fashioned gardening love. I just like the way the Japanese have done these things and I feel that Portland’s Japanese Garden is truly representative of this ancient art.
Here are some looks at a rather primitive-appearing arbor with a massive Wisteria Vine crawling all over it. It offers a vista much along the Chinese lines of Fung Shui, giving us some goodies through the portal leading elegantly and effortlessly to the next great thing. On closer inspection, I think you can see why I so appreciate the sense of “Ancientness” - for lack of a better term - as we look closer at this arbor:
All in all, the construction of this Garden I feel is a sort of Masterpiece. As the lad at the entry was effusive in reminding me: “This garden was rated the 6th best Japanese Garden in the world!” In my travels to Japan and Vancouver - which also has a very cool Japanese Garden - I have seen more than 6. I know there are hundreds. Such a seeming stretch for relevance turns out to me to be quite a statement for the knowledgeable fan. If it is indeed the 6th best in the world, that is huge. I have no trouble admiring the work and I happen to think it is somewhere a bit beyond “world class”.
This one is plain ’special’.
Here are the remaining pictures from my camera that day. Too bad I am not there now, because the seasons are just now changing - another creative elemental ‘capture’ made by this gorgeous place which has its highlights for every season.
Here is a wall I really liked, an incidental piece but illustrative, in my opinion, of the craftsmanship applied to the smallest details here:
A pond I omitted earlier:
This bit of wildness within the garden is close to the above small pond. It gives the most naturalistic forest sense, yet I couldn’t help but feel it was a part of the construction:
Yet another waterfall, towards the wilder area mentioned above:
On the periphery of the garden - a blending of human and Nature as the garden gives way to it.
Another look - back - at the human elements. A gorgeous still pond:
I really, really loved this lantern:
And this one too. Imagine their being lit for passage at night.
Pretty hard not to like these: (more random pictures)
I decided on a small change of pace and will get back to the Japanese Garden later. The rains have sort of essentially “begun” up here in the North West, which means we have about 70% of our future 6 months spent with days involving at least a little rainfall. Some days……………a LOT of rainfall. Depending on your perspective, now, this can be refreshing - Lord, the air is truly clear and pretty magnificent, the truth is. It would be hard to find cleaner air anywhere or as full of oxygen and good ole Ozone. But it also makes for some amazing natural spectacles - read waterfalls.
(These pictures enlarge when clicked on. Please do so.)
This one, notice, has a walkway behind the falls. In fact, where this picture is taken approaches that walkway as the railing indicates. It’s something else entirely, walking behind a waterfall like this. In the Summer, it is one of the coolest spots around because the spray is pretty unavoidable. The sheer volume of water and the rushing and monstrous sounds are silencing to the senses and you just sit in a sort of wonder - or, of course, scream in conversation with your companions.
Here is the view from behind the falls. “What?” “Huh?”
And this is what it looks like down below. This is Silver Falls, and this waterfall is just the most famous of a series of 10 other falls in the same park, all cascades deriving from an obvious decrease in geological altitude and all following the same river from the mountains, down towards the Willamette Valley leading to the the Willamette River. It is a stunning sort of discovery, frankly, and it will rivet itself in the mental images and memories of just about everyone who ever visits it. Breathtaking in scope, it has a variety of angles to appreciate it, including the very top. Maybe especially the very top. Here it is:
Not bad, eh? But this is a hint, not the best yet. This view is alongside it on one of the paths that wind down to the walk beneath the falls. This is the real top:
Dizzy yet?
And this:
I say “Let it rain”, when I see stuff like this and I do make sure I make these trips. They are refreshing, peaceful and awe-inspiring and make life in Oregon sometimes simple genius for the mere fact of living out here. Oh - and this is about an hour outside of Portland, easy to find along some winding country roads which are peaceful in their own right. The numbers of seed grass farms is astounding, en route. It seems to be where Oregon gets its reputation as a real grass seed capital. Huge open fields of green, green grass open up these marvelous vista with Mount Hood often in the view, towering up in its volcanic snow-topped cone like a Mount Fuji - or an ice cream cone for those of us who like food analogies.
My friend Paul and I took all this in one afternoon last year when I got these pictures. I’ll go ahead and show us both with the warning that he is just not too good looking. But the dude sure cooks well! (You know how these ex-footballers are. Paul played college football as a mere 300 pound offensive tackle, lol, being about 6′ 5″ tall (2 meters for you others). And, no, he does not go online, for those who might develop fears for my safety!). Paul also happens to be one of my favorite guys ever. He landscaped with me for a decade, so I know him a little. And, yeah, he is the human equivalent of a backhoe.
Here’s yours truly, with Paul’s able camera assistance, wearing my ever-present Louisville Cardinals hat:
It was a good day. Here are more shots, all of Silver Falls. Oh, that same day we toured closer to Portland. In fact, we traveled up The Gorge (the Columbia River Gorge), a severely sloped valley where the Columbia River passes through whose sheer sides make even more waterfalls, almost all of which are higher and carry as much if not more water than this. They will comprise another post soon. For now, here are some more shots of the absolutely refreshing and stunning Silver Falls, one of my favorite places on Earth:
Feels like a Mohican! This view always reminds me of the movie “The Last Of The Mohicans.”
This is a trip through a less naturalistic and more man-made aspect of the Japanese Garden. That is not to say there is no Naturalism. Far from it. It is always that interplay, in fact, that seems to be evoked in any Japanese Garden and it is the gift they supply us as we walk through them.
The trip around the Japanese Garden is a marvel of tightly-controlled randomness, a weird sort of dialectic speaking of the tension of Nature and man coexisting in a common theme - the enhancement of each. Man shows Nature off here. We see the incredible beauty of the Koi, colorful, gorgeous and sinewy, swimming lazily in still water ponds.
We look at the pruned wonder of a Japanese Black Pine tree, its branching looking wild and anarchistic, yet controlled somehow all the same, driven by man’s hand to display features which we once just potentials, now gorgeous like some work of art.
The natural wonders of the plants and animals all arranged in successive steps unfolding in front of us then yields to those constructions which are even more challenging to the eye: the strictly man made constructions.
There are two exceptional garden pieces composed of white granite bits - resembling sand almost, or even water - which pose this stunning sort of stark foreground for a very limited display of natural products. The top picture shows the upright “Shibumi” rock, arresting in its solitude and quite interesting as a natural shape. Its naturalness is sort of undone by its obvious human placement but its antiquity and timelessness represents the natural world without further explanation. The chances are great the rock is a billion years old. Its preciousness is secured by its loneliness as the sole representative of Time itself. The smaller rocks arranged around it represent a nearly social grouping, separated by the raked surface which most represents water, ironically, and the shimmering effects always revealed when touched no matter how lightly. The minimalism of these characteristics speaks unheard volumes in explaining the ripples of Time and Cause and Effect, connected as they are by a human rake and shovel. It proves that tension is evocative.
The garden below is a personal favorite part of the Garden.This one has a different purpose from the tight, tense placidity of the ones above. This one’s purpose is similar in that the foreground of the white granite pebbles gives an almost liquid serenity. The sole raked beam, coursing through it in a curving and sensuous manner gives us that hint of humanity and the grace of artistic human forms, but it does not intrude on the clarity of the vista the entire complex gives. Here we have the openness of a clearing where the distance seems farther than it is. The optical illusion is effective. It is as if the forces aggregated across the still surface pile up in their diversity, and form a nice crowd of potential friends and enemies.
The plants around this garden actually hide it well, which adds to the sense of solitude and discovery when one encounters it. I mean, it’s a huge area. But who knew?? I absolutely love that idea, as well as the rest of it. It seems we are offered solitude at almost every turn in this delightful garden.
Meanwhile, other man made articles pop out at us from surprising spots as we walk. The Japanese and Chinese both love etching their comments on gorgeous natural stones, arranging them in artistic and very appealing ways.
The commentary is typically minimalistic and in poetics, describing the wonder and mystery of all things. Meanwhile, other rocks are placed simply and starkly, features of their own, giving us a glimpse at the unchanging character of Nature and her Timelessness. They stick out like small explanation points, highlighting Nature’s beauty of form and the randomness of beauty itself, if only we have the ability to see it.
This Garden is so representative of the Japanese Art of Gardening it is actually somewhat astounding in its purity. This was the first of many trips for me to this gorgeous spot. It will definitely be a highlight for visiting friends and family, much the same as the Portland Chinese Garden where I actually played an active role in its construction, as seen and explained in this blog elsewhere.
Nor am I done. Next, I will address yet more man-made aspects of the garden, this time taking a look at the sculptures and artwork, including the constructions of the garden gates and arbors.
You will have to prepare for some semi-literate ranting in this post. I do not claim to be an accomplished writer. I am neither trained for it nor gifted at it. But, having said that, this Japanese Garden has unleashed the author in me - the wordsmith, looking for just the appropriate phrase to somehow represent what I see in the sheer tension and pleasure in this garden’s little wonders.
The subtle care lavished on this huge shrub - intense though it is - presents a weird combination of repose and tension as we appreciate the sheer amount of work and detail put into these tiniest of natural matters. The interplay of light amid the branches with all the supple and robust branching patterns remind us of an immaculately groomed royal personage, perhaps Medieval, en route to some ceremony of real importance. The Japanese talk to us through their landscaping, reminding us that such values as cooperating with Nature reward us in ways we never knew before we encounter them anew, freshly-delivered for our now-new observation. Refreshed therefore, we are able to assess the next wonder, like a taste of ginger to refresh the taste buds.
The needles on this Japanese Black Pine resemble background puffs of cloud or smoke, nearly secondary to the dark bark of its branches and the basic and unruly passionate forms Nature, once again, has given to us as options. The tree therefore becomes a palette for the artist, yet another cooperative venture between man and nature. There is a controlled wildness to the effect, if such a thing seems even possible. For me, it embodies study and repose, a stunning adjustment which never gets old owing to the timelessness of the concept itself and the wildness of Nature’s invariable push towards renewal. There is something essentially poetic about the utter Zen of Japanese Landscape Architecture. Surreal almost, it demands contemplation when you are sat in front of it for any period of time. It “comes to you”, corrosively. And that is a good thing.
The topiary effects of so much of the true Japanese gardening style serves similar purposes. They speak of taming - in the strictest possible ways -in almost apparently cruel manner - the wildness of Nature. But it is also done in service of the garden for human enterprise itself and the plants have proven - much like the dog or horse - to truly not mind so much. The other purpose served is economic, oddly enough. By pruning, we reduce their spatial girth and obstructive size so that these plants allow us to see more. It’s really fairly simple. Nor do we need to acquire others when these get too darn big.
The other effect achieved is strictly artistic. Those shapes provide yet another form - and yet another feast - for the eye. They can be trained to develop along predictable and satisfying lines and, therefore once again return us to the cooperative spirit achieved in these gardens, between man and Nature.
They can return us to primordial forest origins - a trip to an ancient clearing:
Or they can welcome us home to serenity and our own sense of ourselves, our home and our great good fortune in our humaness:
The straight lines and eye-catching geometric’s of Japanese Gardens we get a glimpse of in the above picture. They literally impact modern architecture more than we tend to think. The clean lines and geometric patterns are more than just a pretty face. They nearly always tell a story, full of complexity and depth of thought.
Japanese Gardens are invariably geared to make one contemplative. Unfortunately, they are also geared to making you want to talk about them in a literary style. There are so few other ways in which to speak of them, though. They require attention, detail and a depth. I hope no one minds my rants on the subject. I adore them.
Next time, our final visit to this lovely garden. We will look at the various sculptures there and the amazing gardens of fine white granite. I hope you have enjoyed this little trip.
