If there is a typical image of nature in Japan, it is that of a garden with many cherry trees full of white flowers, in which a small, arch-shaped wooden bridge is never missing. Mount Fujiyama sometimes appears on these postcards, but the photograph of a Japanese garden with its red bridge and a geisha with an umbrella prevails.
Japanese gardens are built with the idea of being places of tranquility and relaxation, even meditation, which makes them very attractive to people from many countries, some of which have even come to have a great tradition of housing Japanese gardens in their cities, as happens in the United States and Argentina. In Spain there is a wonderful Japanese garden in Pamplona.
From the latter country, a tango by Carlos Garden, “Aruba”, is famous, in which the Japanese Park of Buenos Aires is mentioned, inaugurated in 1911 and which included several typically Japanese houses and buildings, as well as landscapes such as Mount Fuji. It was an amusement park that was one of the largest investments in public works of those years.
The Japanese garden is characterized by belonging to a culture completely different from the European or American, and like so many things in Japan, it has many elements or structures that are loaded with symbolism. Sometimes you can see a wall, a fountain or a tree that not only decorates, but has a particular meaning that goes far beyond looking for a symmetrical or concordant beauty, as it would be in Western gardens.
On the contrary, in the Japanese garden asymmetry is sought, but also harmony, but in a different way. Perhaps the extreme symbolism is represented by the Japanese Zen garden, without water, where it is symbolized by sand, with stones that say one thing or another depending on their location.
And it is that stones and rocks are as important as plants and water in Japanese gardens. This is related to the fact that Japan is an archipelago of mountainous and rocky islands with various seas that have profoundly influenced its history and culture.
In addition, there is not one Japanese garden, but four, although they are all characterized as places to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. It should also be noted that Japanese gardens are closed places, and as such they are conceptualized when creating them, they are not parks.
In addition to the variety and the purposes with which they were designed, the different types of garden, all very recognizable as Japanese, will allow us to adjust the space that we want to allocate to make a Japanese garden according to our availabilities, you can even make one to take into account a corner inside the house. We indicate several guidelines so that you know how to make a Japanese garden.
The four Japanese gardens
There are four different types of Japanese garden: the Zen garden, the tea garden, the walking garden, and the borrowed landscape garden.
The Zen garden, “karesansui”, can have many sizes and is designed to meditate in it, or if it is very small, for example the size of one square meter, it will serve for reflection due to its symbolism, because in reality it is designed more for to be admired, like a painting, than to be in it. It does not need vegetation, although it can be minimally.
The tea garden, “chaniwa”, is designed to hold the tea ceremony, a very important activity in Japanese tradition. It can be built in large or small spaces. It is common for there to be a path, a tsukubai or small fountain with its bamboo spout, a lantern or stone lantern, and vegetation.
The promenade garden, or “kaiyushiki”, is already a large garden or park, because it contains trees, shrubs and vegetation along with ponds and streams with their respective bridges, which must be seen in its entirety from the entrance to the garden.
Shakkei-zukuri is the borrowed landscape garden, a concept that means merging the garden itself with the background landscape. Obviously, this is only possible when that natural environment exists, such as in a town, where the countryside, vegetation and mountains are a few hundred meters away, or in an isolated house or something similar. Although it can also be done if you are lucky enough to live in a house next to an urban park.
It is about the garden itself being seen as a first line of the background landscape, so that no fences or walls are seen, or they are well camouflaged, making it seem that we are surrounded by nature in a wide territory around us. In the borrowed landscape garden the size of our garden is of little importance, whether it is very small or very large.
General indications
As general questions when building a Japanese garden, whatever its type or purpose, several things must be taken into account: in a Japanese garden there is no grass, only moss, which means that there must be dark corners and with enough humidity so that it can grow. If it is difficult for it to take root due to lack of humidity or excess sunlight, other plants can be used that will give a similar appearance, such as Japanese carpet or hexane. Other basic plants are bamboo and ferns.
Another basic approach is that in a Japanese garden there is a lot of play with perspectives, so that an impression of majesty or great depth can be given even though the space occupied is not very large. For this, the location and size of the trees and plants used are managed, as well as the stones that mark various milestones within the garden; The bonsai technique can be used, miniaturizing trees that once planted, in contrast to other vegetation, will enhance the sensation of depth and spaciousness, as well as plant variety. Another method is that the plants and elements are darker or lighter in their color and tonality, as well as the density of bushes, plants and flowers, being less in the closer planes and greater the further the view is.
He knew
The Japanese garden, in all its aspects, seeks to be a landscape and for this everything in it is made of natural materials, and for this reason, in the details intended for human use, it also uses natural construction elements, such as wood for the pavilions or tea houses, palisades or for bridges that cross streams, or stone for lanterns or lanterns, for roads, iron or copper for decorative or structural parts.
And besides, everything has to have a patina of old or used, of having suffered the passage of time. It is what is called Sab. Therefore, trees and cut trunks, or stones will be covered with moss, or may be rotten, metal objects exposed to water and weather are stained green or look rusty, and nothing looks new, but under the impact of weather over the years.
The purpose of the garden
A question about the use and destiny of a Japanese garden is that beauty in it is in the lack of symmetry or perfection that, however, produces sensations of harmony. For this reason, he flees from having a finished aspect or one that shows the whims of the human mind, but seeks to approach nature, proposing that it is beautiful in itself, while proposing a very poetic and symbolic gaze. In each part of the Japanese garden there is a place for contemplation of the beauty of its design, but also for meditation.
The preparation of a Japanese garden is also meant to be an experience of all the senses and a deep touch to one’s personal sensibility through two concepts that were developed more than a thousand years ago when Japanese emperors and nobility began to create and practice the art of gardening, with his own imprint from the ideas that had come from China.
This complete experience is based on two ideas or techniques that are more philosophical and spiritual than practical: the miegakure and the shake. The first refers to imagining and finding, that is to say, where there is a plant or a path, there is also a symbol that in principle is not seen, but that we can imagine is there. It forces the viewer to make an effort and look beyond the purely physical. It is not only seeing a black pine or a red bridge, but thinking about how the whole harmonizes the details of each object, the beauty and harmony not only of the general but also of each minimum aspect of what we see.
For its part, the shake, which some translate as “framing and suggesting”, is an oriental concept that is not very understandable for Westerners because it is proposed as an orientation in the route that we take through the garden. An example would be that we can walk taking normal steps, and the shake will suggest us savor the sensation of changing and taking long strides or short steps, paying attention to the change of rhythm and how this makes us see the garden environment in a different way. It means that we have to concentrate on the walk or tour we are doing in the garden, so that our experience is something complete and total, not just one of absent-minded admiration for the surroundings.
A plant for each corner.
Each place or corner of the garden, each plane, has specific vegetation that is commonly used to fill and upholster that specific part of the garden, in what is a typical arrangement of its structure.
The background, which will be a wall or wall of greater or lesser height and encloses the garden, can be covered with the following plants: medium bamboo, spruce pine, willow, ginkgo or apple tree and Japanese black pine, cherry of Japanese flower, the plum tree, the cherry laurel.
In the background, in front of the trees and plants in the background, and also around any ponds or fountains, species such as palmate maple, wisteria, yews, pines, laurels, ammonia will be placed.
Dwarf bamboo and others, ferns, tree peony and others can be used for the borders or limits on one side and the other and edging. And in the foreground vegetation or closer to the entrance, as well as for the ground, dwarf bamboos, the host, the Nanina, the moss or the helping, the Saginaw…
Likewise, there are many flowers with which to fill various spaces in the Japanese garden, such as the azalea, the chrysanthemum -Japan’s national flower-, the Japanese quince, the magnolia, the apricot flower, the kuku, and the sacra, with which will increase the shades of color that the garden will offer.
Designing the Japanese garden
As has already been said, there are four main types of Japanese garden. In the case of making a Japanese Zen garden, which can also be installed in an interior patio, its design is simple and with few elements: Stones of different sizes, white sand and gravel. You have to build a square, delimited by not very large pebbles, fill it with white sand and gravel, and place large rocks and on top of them other smaller ones, including some that will be standing. Since the sand represents the water that surrounds the stones, which are islands, you have to rake the sand forming waves or undulations, also straight lines, an activity that will give us a meditation that should be weekly. You can add a shrub or small plant in a pot or on the rocks, or in its place, as well as some bamboo,
The tea garden is characterized by having two areas separated by a stone wall or a vegetable barrier with a gate that joins them. What would be the exterior garden has a path of slabs or wood that will continue inside, which can be straight or winding. You should have bushes and trees like those found in the wild in the forest. Next to the door, there will be a tsukubai or bowl of stone and water to wash your hands and mouth, and it should be in a low place, so that visitors have to bend down in a gesture of humility. In the inner garden, where there may be moss and ferns, the path will lead to a wooden hut where the tea ceremony is held.
The promenade garden is characterized by being large and having at least one more or less internal circular path around a pond or crossing a river or stream on several occasions by its corresponding wooden bridges. It contains many plant elements, both trees and shrubs and flowers. It is also common for there to be one or more gentle hills with paths for walking. In this type of garden you can place fountains, sculptures and lanterns or stone lanterns. Since its size is generally large, it is common to have to consult with experts and professionals to build it.
Consultation with a professional is also highly indicated to build a Japanese garden with a borrowed landscape, because it also requires the placement of trees, shrubs, flowers and carpets on different planes from larger to smaller, in turn, you have to know the botanical environment to that the garden is seen as a continuation of the background natural landscape and merges with it. Also, like the walkway garden, it needs a greater economic investment, so it is advisable to plan it in advance in detail and carefully.
