Paradise Gardens - my new book

Plants and gardens have been, and in many cases continue to be, cornerstones of religions. Plants imbued with symbolism and gardens created as an earthly expression of a paradisaical afterlife. 

Think about it - the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil with its 'apple' (I know, the garden in Eden is supposed to have been a real place on Earth not an afterlife concept), the chahar bagh form of the Islamic garden, all those great Ancient Greek myths, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the lotus in Buddhism and the Island of the Blessed in Taoist mythology, etc., etc., etc.

So, my splendid new tome, Paradise Gardens is the story of plants and gardens within seventeen different global religions over a five millennia time frame. And, even though I say it myself it is a fascinating story. Moreover many of the religio-garden forms have been and are still an inspiration for secular gardens the world over.  

For some more information about the book, check out its Amazon page....

Chinese & Japanese Gardens

Walking further along our path of time and looking east, we encounter the gardens of China and Japan.  Thick academic tomes can be, and have been written on these gardens.  What follows, therefore, is nothing more than an overview.  In fact I am not sure Westerners can ever fully understand the nuances of garden styles that are an physical expression of a far deeper and ingrained psycho-philosophical nature-centric view of the world and our place in it. 

The Silver Temple, Kyoto

Certainly, and however hard we try to imitate Chinese and in particular, Japanese garden, we never do more than that - create an imitation.  And in so doing we loose their essence - five minutes spent in a garden in Kyoto or Suzhou drives that point home subtly bur emphatically.

In China, hunting parks., somewhat similar to the Persian pairidæza, were made during the Zhou period (1066-221 BC).  Perhaps the most famous was the Shanglin Park created by Qin Shi Huang as ‘ a symbol of the empire's worldly supremacy and cosmic grandeur.’

The spectacular Chinese landscape was seen as something to be used - the impact of man being considered adornment rather than subjugation - an attitude which can be said to have direct parallels with the English Landscape Garden of the 18th century.

The landscape was also associated with the legendary eight Immortals or xian, who lived amongst the peaks of the mythical Mount Kunlun (the Himalaya) in the west, and on the Isles of the Blessed in the eastern sea, with their misty valleys, blue rivers, delightful flora and pleasure pavilions.

The Humble Administrator's Garden, Suzhou

This concept of Immortality and the eternal unity of all things in nature became an intrinsic part of Taoism and, together with the legends of the Islands of the Immortals became fused with the teaching of Buddhism which arrived in China in the 1st century AD.

All had a strong impact on Chinese garden styles.  By the 3rd century a cultural matrix of mythology and nature philosophy (together with a hefty dose of imperial authority) melded with the arts of gardening, painting, poetry and calligraphy in an approach that was going to last for 1,500 years.

The Lingering Garden, Suzhou

For the literati, the garden was a place of enjoyment, repose, study and discussion.  Within the enclosing walls, a variety of sensory experiences were created through the medium of ingenious spatial connections and the core design elements of water and rock, symbolic of mountains and the sea, with pavilions  from which to view the garden.

In Japan, the dominant religion before the arrival of Taoist and Buddhist ideas from China in the 5th and 6th centuries was Shinto which teaches that everything contains a kami or spirit power.  Indeed, The Japanese word for garden, niwa, was first used to denote a sanctified space in nature set apart for the worship of Shinto.

Pure Land Buddhism was particularly influential on the development of gardens during the Heian period (794-1191) when architecture followed the symmetrical shinden style.  Gardens, with their water and rock symbolising both the Pure Land the Islands of the Blessed were large and to be used.  A rare survivor (albeit much modified) is Byōdō-in near Kyoto.

Byodo-in

The Kamakura (1185-1333) & Muromachi (1333-1547) periods saw rise of the samuri and a shift to asymmetrical shoin architecture with the garden becoming something to be viewed not entered.  This was the time of widespread adoption of Zen Buddhism, the austerity and simplicity of its ethos and its gardens appealing to the needs and wants of the samuri.  So arose the kare niwa or dry gardens.  The Muromachi era also saw the emergence of the tea ceremony and a refined rusticity of the tea garden.  

Ryogen-in, Kyoto

Early in the Edo Period (1603-1867) came the Stroll Garden, its aim to epitomise the art of kirei sabi - elegant beauty infused with a weathered rustic quality.

Is sum, the Japanese garden is not simply a copying of nature, ‘self created’ as the word shizen would have us believe.  It has always been nature crafted by man, and at its best, is nature as art.  For although the garden may look natural, the garden maker has taken select forms of nature, isolated them from their natural context and placed them to be experienced within the new, unnatural setting, an intellectually imposed enclosure which physically and visually frames nature.

Katrsura Imperial Villa, Kyoto

Thus the Japanese garden is a symbiosis of the right angle and natural form, and is very closely associated to the architecture of the house.  In Japan beauty is perceived as the conscious overlapping of the beauty of a natural object and the perfection of the man-made type.  The Japanese garden aims to be an amalgam of both these forms of beauty. 

All I can add is - go there and see them for yourself.  From personal experience, 15 minutes spent in Ryoan-ji before the gates opened to the public is something I will never forget.  For more, have a read of Marie Luise Gothein's chapter on China and Japan.

Is it ‘Rock Garden’, ‘Rockery’ or ‘Alpine Garden’?

The origins of rock used ornamentally in gardens can be traced back to China.  Inspirations for Chinese gardens of were the the natural landscape, Taoist and Buddhist love of nature, the mythological Immortals who dwelt amongst the peaks of the mythical Mount Kunlun in the far west, and the Isles of the Blessed  in the eastern sea.

Penglai  - one of the  Islands of the Immortals.

As early as the 2nd century BC,  Emperor Han Wudi (Liu Che, 141-86 BC) attempted to entice them to come to him. At the Jianzhang Palace (which was built in the Shanglin Garden 5 km north of today's downtown Xi'an) was built a garden - a lake in which stood rock constructions imitating  the four island peaks of the Immortals.

The Cloud Capped Peak in the Liu Yuan garden, Suzhou.

During the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Emperor Huizong (author of the famous Treatise on Tea) developed such a love of picturesque limestone rocks from lake Taihu, that trade was seriously interrupted when by royal decree the canals were closed in order that barges could transporting huge monoliths.  Such excess eventually led to his downfall.

The most famous of all kare niwa - Ryoan-ji, Kyoto.

Taoist and Buddhist influences travelled to Japan where they fused with the indigenous belief of Shinto.  Rock in the garden remained a key design element during the Heian period (795-1195) with its symmetrical Shinden architecture and Pure Lands gardens (a rare survivor is Bodoyo-in near Kyoto) and the subsequent Kamakura period (1185-1392) when asymmetrical Shoin architecture was complemented by the Zen inspired kare niwa or dry gardens.  

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In Britain, rock as an ornament in the garden did not become fashionable until the late 18th century by which time there were two schools of thought on rock arrangement. The 'naturalists' made rock features that imitated nature.  Humphry Repton, for example, created rugged rock features at Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire  from 1789.  Contrastingly, the 'artists' saw rocks as ornaments and created artificial constructions to display agglomerations of rocks, geological specimens, fossils and shells, an approach that owed much to the baroque and rococo use of rock in fanciful creations such as grottoes.

The grotto at Villa Farnese, Italy - an inspiration for later British examples.

At the same time there was an increasing interest in growing plants we now call alpines.  These tricksy specimens were often grown in pots and plunged into gaps amongst the rocks. An early example of a rock garden as a setting for plants was Marianne's Garden at Hafod in Wales, designed and planted by Dr James Anderson from 1795-96.  The 2007 archeological evaluation makes for interesting reading.

Roackwork from Loudon's The Villa Gardener Companion (1850)

In 1834 John Claudius Loudon passed his judgement on the complex question of how rock in the garden should be defined.  The purpose of a rockery was for the cultivation of ‘rock plants' (alpines).   For example, Lamport Hall - see previous post.   'Rockwork' as an ornamental feature, Loudon declared, fell into three categories:

• Naturalistic (aka Repton)
• Contrast
• Scale Model

The contrast was  a very natural rock feature
 juxtaposed with a very unnatural feature such as a bedding display or hothouse.

Friar Park.  For scale there are two people just below and to the left of the pea

And the scale model was real natural scenery in miniature.  For example, in the 1820s Lady Broughton of  Hoole House, Cheshire, placed at end of the lawn placed a mini-Savoie and the valley of Chamonix.  Later in the century Sir Frank Crisp made a mini-Matterhorn at Friar Park, Berkshire - the former home of the Beatle, George Harrison.