| The Hakone Foundation and Japanese Garden |
| Zen and the Art of the Japanese Garden |
From "Dirt On Gardening"
episode DDOG-103 |
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A growing trend in home landscaping is creating cultural gardens--e.g., those incorporating themes of traditional Asian, English, Tuscan or American Southwest gardens. To learn more about the attributes and disciplines found in the traditional Japanese garden, DIY visits Hakone Garden in Saratoga, California--where the intent is to create a seamless merging of art and nature following original Japanese principles.Envisioned and established by Oliver and Isabel Stein for their California summer home in 1918, this serene setting still retains the beauty and symbolism of a true Japanese garden. It's a subtle, visually pure and uncluttered approach to garden design in which rock embodies form, plants signify life and water evokes the infinite.
Hakone Gardens
in Saratoga, California
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Hakone Gardens was
established in 1918.
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"Symbol is important for the Japanese garden," says Lon Saavedra, director of the Hakone Foundation, "because the nature of the Japanese experience and the Asian experience is that nature, in miniature, is a reflection of your internal potential of tranquility and peace." The Hakone Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving this 18-acre landscape masterpiece--the oldest Japanese-style residential garden in the Western Hemisphere.
The art of bonsai is one familiar example of nature emulated on a small scale commonly seen in Japanese gardens. Another is the careful pruning of plants into asymmetrical forms. "The asymmetrical nature of a Japanese garden is based on nature in miniature," says Saavedra. "In nature, you don't see a lot of right angles. You don't see man imposing his forms artificially."
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In fact, many of the themes found in Japanese gardens are re-creations of scenes found in nature--a rugged shoreline, mountainside waterfall or a river valley. Rocks, water and plants are the key integral elements.Jack Tomlinson is a Japanese garden specialist and has tended Hakone Gardens for more than thirty years. "The stones are very often the most important feature in a Japanese garden," he says. "Once they're placed, the trees and the plants can be placed around them to enhance the feeling that you're trying to create." At Hakone, the total design of the garden revolves around one "master stone". Placed nearby is a "prayer stone"--positioned in the spot from which the master stone is best viewed. The other stones and the plants throughout the garden are then positioned in relation to those two stones.
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