Japanese garden styles and flower restraint

The main styles

The pond garden, the oldest type, sets islands and bridges in water to be seen from a hall or a boat. The dry landscape garden, karesansui, uses raked gravel and rocks to stand for water and mountains, as at Ryoan-ji in Kyoto. The tea garden, roji, is a simple mossy path with stepping stones and a water basin leading to a tea house. The stroll garden of the Edo period, such as Kenroku-en in Kanazawa, leads the visitor around a lake through a sequence of views.

Where it comes from

Garden making arrived from China and Korea along with Buddhism more than a thousand years ago. An eleventh-century manual, the Sakuteiki, already sets out rules for placing stones and guiding streams. Zen temples in medieval Kyoto developed the dry garden as an aid to contemplation. Tea masters of the sixteenth century shaped the plain, rustic taste of the tea garden. A lasting idea is borrowed scenery: framing a distant hill or tree so that it becomes part of the garden.

Moss and the place of flowers

Moss is prized as a ground cover and is weeded and swept by hand. The temple of Saiho-ji in Kyoto, known as the moss temple, has well over a hundred kinds. Flowering plants are chosen for a season: plum in late winter, cherry and camellia in spring, azaleas clipped into rounded mounds in May, irises and hydrangeas in the June rains, lotus in summer. Bright mixed colour is avoided. The autumn maples provide the strongest colour of the year.

How to take part

1. Sit on the veranda of a temple garden for ten minutes before taking any photographs.
2. Follow the set route in a stroll garden. The views are designed to appear in order.
3. Reserve well ahead for gardens that require it, such as Saiho-ji and the imperial villas in Kyoto.
4. Visit in more than one season if you can. The same garden changes completely.

Good manners

• Never step on moss or raked gravel.
• Keep your voice low, and do not use tripods where signs forbid them.
• Remove your shoes where asked before stepping onto wooden verandas.

The flowers

Prunus mumeThe fragrant plum blossom tree that blooms in winter across East AsiaCamelliaA flowering shrub or small tree with rose-like blooms in red, pink or whiteSatsuki azaleaA Japanese azalea with many cultivated formsJapanese irisA tall, rhizomatous iris with bluish-purple flowers and yellow-marked fallsBigleaf HydrangeaA Japanese shrub with large pink or blue flower heads that change colour with soilSacred lotusThe pink aquatic flower sacred in Asia and grown for food, worship and beauty

Sources and further reading

• Japanese garden on Wikipedia