Five Japanese Style Gardens

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Introduction to Five Japanese Style Gardens

People have been turning nature into gardens for thousands of years. In the name of gardening, they train flowers that were never meant to have trunks into trees and force plants to create hybrids that never would have existed. Japanese gardens, however, differ from common Western gardens that obsess over flowers and plants. As opposed to the elaborate tulip gardens of Keukenhof, Netherlands, or the manicured Rose Garden of the White House, Japanese gardens tend to leave more to the imagination and represent nature as it is. They value even those trees with twisted, gnarled trunks and don't shy away from rugged stones.

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Looking out at a Japanese garden situated at the
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Simple yet stunning, Japanese gardens come in several varieties. Many people are familiar with the so-called Zen gardens (more accurately called Japanese rock gardens), but less so with other Japanese garden styles. This is unfortunate because Japanese gardens try to inspire serenity and introspection by incorporating symbolic and natural elements. In this article, you'll learn about five styles of Japanese gardens that may help you achieve a little more inner peace.

Keep reading to learn about the gardens that some people think look like heaven on earth.

Style 5: Paradise Gardens

The Chinese introduced gardens to Japan in the 6th century. As a result, the earliest Japanese gardens displayed a strong Chinese influence from that country's Jodo sect of Buddhism. This religion teaches that if followers chant the Buddha Amitabha's name they are assured a place in the Pure Land -- a sort of heaven before enlightenment. The Pure Land was not an intangible idea to the Japanese, but a physical reality complete with beautiful pavilions and ponds full of lotus blossoms where immortals drifted in boats.

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Kinkaku-ji, or the Golden Pavilion, is modeled after an impressive two-story building that was part of one of the oldest surviving Paradise gardens in Japan, Saiho-ji.

Partly due to the civil unrest in Japan at the time, the Japanese eagerly embraced the idea of the Pure Land and tried to emulate it with paradise gardens. The aristocracy built most of these gardens, which spanned several acres, but some peasants created their own designs on a smaller scale. Since these gardens symbolize paradise, they are showier than other Japanese style gardens.

The typical paradise garden has an island in the middle of a pond to represent the future salvation and a curved bridge connecting the island to the rest of the garden to represent the path you must travel to reach that salvation. Although few original paradise gardens remain, many present-day Japanese pavilions are modeled after the buildings that once graced their grounds.

As the Jodo sect of Buddhism began to lose its appeal and was replaced by the Zen Buddhist sect, Japanese gardens became less lavish. Continue reading to learn more about these simpler gardens.

Style 4: Tea Gardens

The tea gardens of Japan originated when the Zen monks brought the ritual of drinking powdered tea to the country to reduce sleepiness during meditation. The tea ceremony was a formal affair in which tea leaves were ground down and steeped in a bitter broth, which people then passed around in a common bowl.

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A path leads to the teahouse on the left in a Japanese
tea garden.

The gardens, which are designed to evoke the qualities of solitude and age, are constructed with simple, rustic materials to maintain harmony with the atmosphere and, they center on the ceremonial teahouse. Made from natural materials, teahouses blend into their surroundings and are accessed by a path that symbolizes the journey into a more peaceful state of mind. Guests enter the teahouse through a low door, so built to humble them upon entering.

The houses are enclosed by an outer entrance garden where participants wait for the ceremony to begin and a sacred inner garden that you do not enter but only observe and contemplate from outside its walls. This series of small areas in the tea garden is designed as part of the process of preparing guests' minds for the ceremony. The outer garden contains a water basin for people to purify themselves by washing away sins, a bench for resting and specially designed lanterns.

If you like your garden free of man-made structures, you'll want to read about natural gardens on the next page.

Style 3: Natural Gardens

Natural gardens are one of the simplest styles of Japanese gardens. They rarely use ornaments such as lanterns or statues, and in place of bridges, gardeners often lay a few flat stones to cross over any water. Natural gardens try to replicate a woodsy scene as closely as possible. Their designers believe that the feeling of being in the woods and the accompanying solitude encourages deep thought and peace of mind.

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Natural gardens give the feeling of being deep in the woods.

Natural gardens usually have a full overhead canopy created by their many unpruned trees, so they are full of shade-loving plants like ferns, bamboo and azaleas. Moss is often used as the main ground cover. The abundance of green plants, combined with the overhead canopy, makes these gardens look like a green canvas interlaced with winding streams. The paths in these gardens are not sketched out or paved but are instead formed with a natural substance like dirt, which makes them appear untrodden. Although they might be very close to civilization, these gardens are designed to make you feel as though you are a million miles away, both physically and mentally.

Read about how water can also quiet your mind and body on the next page.

Style 2: Strolling Pond Gardens

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A curved bridge crosses over the pond in a strolling pond garden.

The strolling pond gardens of Japan are accurately named; they have an ornamental pond as their centerpiece and a path that meanders around the garden's periphery. The path may branch off in many places to provide spots for contemplation. These side paths may lead up to a grassy overlook or down to the pond's edge, and their existence allows you to have some control over your experience. Like the natural gardens, strolling pond gardens feature a variety of plants scattered beside their paths for your viewing pleasure. Common plants include Japanese irises and weeping willows.

The strolling pond gardens also incorporate several man-made objects, unlike the natural gardens, which try to replicate nature as closely as possible. Along with benches provided at strategic points along the path to encourage pauses, you might see a heron sculpture fishing in an inlet or a bronze frog basking in the sun. In addition, you might spot large stones in the water, representing a crane or tortoise, both of which wish you a long life. Looking toward the pond, you will see curved bridges cross the pond in several areas. In the water you may glimpse some Japanese koi darting among the water lilies.

Turn the page to read about one garden that doesn't look like a garden at all.

Style 1: Flat Sea Gardens

Despite what the name suggests, flat sea gardens are not water hazards. In stark contrast to the profusion of green in natural gardens and the abundance of water in strolling pond gardens, flat sea gardens actually feature no water and little vegetation, save for the characteristic black pines that serve as their backdrop.

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The gravel around this stone is raked to symbolize waves in the sea in this flat sea garden.

The "sea" here is made of a wide expanse of raked sand or fine gravel. The sea is raked at the edges to suggest the pattern of waves on a shoreline. Unlike raking leaves, where the goal is to collect piles, the point of raking sand or gravel is to comb through it to create the desired pattern. To add to the appearance of a vast sea, the flat sea gardens possess "shorelines" of stones and boulders, as well as "islands" of vegetation. Sometimes the stones in the raked area are placed in a way that suggests a familiar parable, or story.

Like several of the other gardens, benches are placed at particular points in this garden for contemplation and rest. Most flat sea gardens are observed from the edges and seldom have walkways venturing into the raked area.

For more information about the Japanese gardens described in this article, you'll want to dig through the links on the next page.

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Five Japanese Style Gardens