Experiencing Tranquility in Japanese Gardens

There is no doubt that Japanese gardening has become quite popular. You can find influences of Japanese designs in formal gardens, parks and religious enclosures. The good news is, you can enjoy the beauty and tranquility of a design Japanese garden right in your own home.

Garden History

The beautiful illustrations that you see in Japanese gardens books are the modern evolution of an age-old art. The distinct gardens of Japan first became popular more than a thousand years ago as religious gardens. It did not take long however for these gardens to eventually evolve into places of leisure, ceremony and enjoyment for the middle and upper class members of society.

Since the 1800s the Japanese gardening influence has steadily spread to the west. This is despite the fact that garden masters in the past were protective of the secrets of their craft and only passed their skill to promising apprentices.

Today, all modern design Japanese garden elements continue to share similar principles and elements. The two major outstanding principles however are nature and balance. A gardener must incorporate only what is natural but in a way that will fit space, such that it is possible to recreate the beauty of nature even in the smallest lots.

Elements

Japanese gardens are what they are because of the merging of unique elements. In general, a traditional Japanese garden would incorporate water, plants, ornaments, borrowed scenery and rocks. The last element is most evident in a typical Japanese rock garden. Despite the similarities in elements though, these gardens are not all Japanese rock gardens. There are many designs and styles of gardens.

As mentioned, one of the most common designs is the Japanese rock garden . This is properly called a dry landscape garden or karesansui. It was once most commonly seen in temples. This is the type of garden that does not incorporate water. It instead uses sand, gravel and small Japanese garden plants such as moss to simulate nature. Even water, which is absent, is represented by specially raked sand. The flat and open style of Japanese gardening is most often employed in this design.

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The tea design Japanese garden is also known as chaniwa. This is the design where the use of ornaments is popular. Since it is used for tea ceremonies, a garden of this type would have a physical structure with a roof and some lanterns. Paths and stone steps are also carefully positioned.

The tsukiyama design is perhaps one of the most difficult Japanese gardening designs to execute. The design carefully mimics natural bodies of land and water into a small space. The size and placement of each element is carefully determined to create the illusion of space and distance.

These are only the basic concepts of Japanese gardening. It will definitely take more than just a few glimpses of Japanese gardens books for you to become a master at it. If you want to develop your own Japanese inspired garden, you need to have a love and appreciation for nature, balance, element and style. There is however, always a lot of time to master the skill to design Japanese garden art .

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