Introduction

What is a Japanese style garden? What does it look like? What emotions does it stir within you? Why have Japanese style gardens fascinated Europeans for centuries and why has there recently been an enormous surge of interest in them? What is it in this ancient garden form that speaks to us so strongly on the verge of a new millennium?

Most people have a mental picture of what a Japanese garden contains. Scenes are conjured with arrangements of rocks and pebbles, a pine or a red maple tree, bamboo, a lantern, and perhaps a deer scarer. All of these things could be in a Japanese garden but they do not in themselves make the garden Japanese in style.

Gardens are practical places where work is done but where we can, when we choose, experience exceptional peace and tranquillity. In the Japanese garden we learn about the natural world in a very profound way. This is a practical book that aims to provide sufficient historic perspective and practical guidance for you to create a Japanese style garden of your own. It is not the aim of this book to give a chronological history of the Japanese garden: that has been done adequately in other books. However, a certain amount of the history is necessary to understand the gardens’ underlying design forms, simply because they are the structures upon which the garden must be built. Without a strong design basis the garden you create will become a mere pastiche of Japanese looking elements, a frivolous and dissatisfying thing.