It’s Called Geography

 “For a rule of the art is that its experts do not explain the reason and cause of the things they do in this matter by word but by deeds only, for they live everything to the consideration of reasoning of their pupils.”

-       Marc Peter Keane, The Japanese Tea Garden

The weird thing about trying to learn today about Japanese gardens, which were invented when Japanese monks traveled to see Chinese gardens and applied a Zen minimalism, is that you have to read books. That’s not the weird thing. The weird thing is that the way real Chinese and Japanese gardeners learned their craft was not by reading but by doing. And they didn’t have teachers that lectured. The apprentice just watched, and watched. As did Keane, to learn his art. The student has become the master, Grasshopper.

Then again, Terry Pratchett thinks you can take those goofy Zen riddles a bit too far. He says that the sound one hand clapping makes is something like “cl”. At any rate, here are some of my favorite books on the subject of Japanese and Chinese Gardening.

You can learn about large Japanese gardens in the Taschen (aka beautifully illustrated) book “Japanese Gardens: Right Angle and Natural Form” by Gunter Nitschke. It is a history book of (mostly) large garden spaces from their origins to the present day. One of the nicer things in this book is the interpretation of the principles accompanying the pictures of some of the most famous gardens in Japan. The thing I like best about it is that it includes a lot about the role of rocks in the garden, and in plants that mimic other forms in nature like plants and trees that mimic mountains and streams.

If you want to go back further, look into Chinese gardens. “Gardens of Longevity in China and Japan, by Pierre and Susanne Rambach. This is another lovely coffee-table picture book that could be used as an art history text because it explains how Chinese landscape painting was packed full of geomancy and symbolism. I believe to make an authentic Japanese garden you need to understand some of the theory that many early European students of Chinese art completely missed. From deconstructing the elaborate mountainside paintings to the calligraphically minimalist drawings, the authors then connect actual gardens to actual paintings. Some are large gardens and some are miniaturized versions. This book is one of the best at showing the relationship and cross-pollination of Chinese and Japanese.

If you want to skip the theory and just have a pretty, authentic Asian-inspired backyard garden or a small pot planted with a bonsai or entire miniature landscape including rocks, you go straight to projects. A good book for this is “Japanese Gardens in a Weekend” by Robert Ketchell. The subtitle says it all: Projects for 1, 2 or 3 weekends. Although I found them to be more like 1 -3 month- projects.

A better book is a mix of theory and practical projects: “The Art of Japanese Gardens: Designing & Making Your Own Peaceful Space, by Herb Gustafson. I have a paperback version of what I’m sure is even prettier in hardback. The book combines great illustrations, brief but thorough explanations, and excellent practical recommendations.

But my current favorite one is Kean’s tea garden book quoted above.  I first knew of him because he learned Japanese gardening in the traditional way and at one point was not only designing gardens in Kyoto, he was on the faculty at Kyoto University of Art and Design. His 2001 co-translation of one of the first written Japanese Garden books called the Sakuteiki, and later “Japanese Garden Design” which draws heavily on his own training and expertise to interpret these gardens from the inside out: from the intent of the designer.

My favorite thing that comes through in all these books is what drew me to these types of gardens in the first place. In order to create a garden that that encourages a sense of peace, you must include a sense of time - an indispensible part of the tradition of Japanese and Chines gardening. Landscape is something you can do over a weekend or two. If you want a place to go to find peace and stillness, a place to bring you into the present, you need a place that understands and expresses the past. You need a place where the stones are alive with the magic of the flora and fauna that have passed through their eyes like a speeded-up film over long periods of time.

Trees can live longer than people. Flowers can live for briefer periods. The land has been here since it’s been here. As Terry Pratchett says in Wyrd Sisters when the Kingdom is getting angry because the new king doesn’t like it, two witches discuss the problem:

“…How come this one takes offense all of a sudden?”

”It’s been here a long time,” said Granny.

“So’s everywhere,” said Nanny…”Everywhere’s been where it is ever since it was first put there. It’s called geography.”

“That’s just about land,’ said Granny. “It’s not the same as a kingdom. A kingdom is made up of all sorts of things. Ideas. Loyalties. Memories. It all sort of exists together. And then all these things create some kind of life made up of everything that’s alive and what they’re thinking. And what the people before them though.”

My backyard is succumbing to the drought. Our once large waterfall has been made into a tiny tumble over some rocks waving with hair algae – not a good thing. The pond cannot support koi because it is built on decomposing granite and is barely two feet deep. Koi need four feet of depth to hide from predatory (and protected) wildlife like migrating egrets. I’ve had a few.

My tiny tsukubai recirculating pump quit working months ago and the thyme that had strugled in poverty for years finally pulled up its roots and migrated. That’s my story anyway. I can no longer hear the splash of the water like I could when my bedroom door was feet away. Not only am I practically deaf, I sleep at the other end of the house now.  But I want to see it, and the hummingbirds it attracts when the water is running.

I debated getting a shishi-odoshi. I could hear the thunk on the rock and recall that sound from one we had further back in the garden years ago. Not only did it quit working, the electrical line powering its pump has been cut and the old original pond has become a bog that supports water plants and has lured a few unsuspecting visitors who mistake the covering of azolla for a solid lawn.  But that would take more room, and require a bigger investment of my limited energy because I’d have to install a pool liner to cover a larger spill area. Higher maintenance and higher evaporation loss are no longer options.

So I finally confirmed my earlier troubleshooting: the pump was dead. I got a new pump and carelessly didn’t realize it wasn’t powerful enough to lift the water up the 30” pipe to drip into the stone basin.

I’m going to try Korean grass based on my theory that it’s fatter and acts like its own mulch and maybe won’t let the ground get so dry like the doomed thyme. I’ve also got some chicken manure, some steer manure and some topsoil to add to the sorry dead dirt. I want to take the stupid micro spray heads that surround the perimeter sticking up 6 inches like mutant black plastic sentinels from some animae nightmare, and plant them deeper to be more level with the ground so they don’t spoil the entire effect.

My goal is to get out and use my newly flexible limbs to garden again, to get some sunshine after a dark winter, to get my fingernails dirty and to make a modest place for some peace, and to soak in some time.  I guess that’s more than one goal. And since I just decided to replace the old splitting bamboo, I now have to wait a week for the internets to bring me a new one. My beautifully aged Natsume basin is worn smooth with a patina of age that has turned the once factory looking grey concrete a deep black. Too bad I can’t grow moss in this climate.

My longer term goal is to have a small tsukubai garden with properly named and placed stones, and the deeply symbolic and appropriate three-friends of winter planting: a pine, a plum, and a bamboo. I’m going to have to replace that impractical weeping cherry with a western redbud and try to figure out how to prune it into a dwarf size to fit the small garden. Time for that later. Meanwhile, it will be another ten years for the black pine to catch up while keeping the small but spreading bamboo from swallowing everything. Plenty of time for a fast-growing redbud to thrive.

I am not in a hurry to make this happen because I’m willing to invest some time into making a drought tolerant yet traditionally Japanese space that looks like it’s been around a while and that will be around a little while longer. Someplace that looks like it’s been here ever since it was first put here.

Tea Gardens

“Tea is nought but this.
First you make the water boil,
Then infuse the tea.
Then you drink it properly.
That is all you need to know.”
Sen Rikyu

It may be hard to believe, but back in the day, many people in my generation were loud, opinionated, and ready to protest anything that offended our sensibilities. It was exhausting work being so passionate and ideological, particularly about stuff I understood so little. Some of us educated hippies who survived mellowed down as we aged. Many of us came late to discover the appeal of Asian arts and philosophies. Something about Eastern arts are particularly peaceful and refreshing to Western eyes, particularly when it comes to gardens. Pictured first is a portion of the zen garden at the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park, San Diego.

Like Chinese scholars striving to master the four art forms we cultivated various oriental arts. Some of us got tattoos of Chinese characters. Some of us took calligraphy classes in adult ed. Some of us took up yoga or tai chi or some more clearly martial arts. Some of us became Buddhists, as sincere and innocent as Lisa Simpson. Some - in denial about their OCD - learned to practice the strictly choreographed formal art of tea, or Cha-no-yu, which literally means hot water for tea in Japanese.

I fell in love with the Japanese Tea Garden, a supreme expression in gardening of a style of spare but not austere rusticity. Japanese tea gardens are subtle with muted lights and colors, never flashy with banks of colorful flowers and foliage. Like the tea and the ceremony, Japanese gardens originated in China, a place known for their own unique gardening style that is both substantially different from and similar to what evolved into the Japanese Tea Garden style. My backyard has become what a polite and charitable observer might call a fusion of Japanese Tea Garden and the kind of small scale Chinese Garden designed to permit many small vignettes for “’in position viewing’ i.e. lingering observation from fixed angles” as Chen Congzhou calls them.

Pictured here is the tsukubai arrangement at the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park. Close outside the door onto the small sheltered patio (the fourth picture, below) is my attempt to create an authentic tsukubai water basin with a stone lantern. Apart from a struggling carpet of thyme which is the closest I can get to moss, there are three small trees: a black pine that will be another 20 years before it even begins to take the shape I intend, a small clumping bamboo, and struggling weeping cherry that I happen to love it despite it’s inappropriateness for this style and for this climate zone. These three – pine, plum, and bamboo – are known as the three friends of winter, which is a story for another post.

Because my backyard is not conveniently located Japanese mountain stream my water basin filled from a small bamboo pipe flows over into a basin with a pump to re-circulates the water. The basin itself is from a local Chinese importer: a grey granite-colored carved stone basin that has been worn shiny and black over the years.

The stone lantern pictured here is a Japanese s style named after a famous tea master Furuta Oribe. An Oribe doro is distinguished by its cleaner line, its secular lack of carvings religious iconography, and its lack of pedestal stone. This one is in the Japanese Friendship Garden has a tiny slice of new moon that would glow when lit in the long summer twilight. A.L. Sadler says (in Cha-No-You: The Japanese Tea Ceremony (1933)), “Where a stone lantern has a ‘New Moon’ shaped opening in its top this should always be turned toward the west, while a Full Moon shaped one should be turned toward the east, but others consider this of no great importance and prefer to turn the lantern so that the light looks best in the garden.” The one pictured here has been placed with the tiny moon facing west.

The partly obscured lantern pictured here in my tsukubai garden is clearly Japanese, with 8-petaled lotus the Buddhist symbol of purity comprising the heavy pedestal, and the top finial shaped like a lotus bud. Called the Kasuga lantern, this style takes its name from the famous Kasuga shrine in Nara.

Apart from the technicalities, there is another deeper layer of understanding tea gardens that appeals to me. Imitating style is relatively easy to learn. Mastering design is difficult. The reasons for this have something to do with the way experts teach. I’m used to the Western approach where it’s all outlined in books with footnotes and exhausting detail. It was relatively easy for me to compose and execute my tsukubai based on a bit of research, a few really nice local rocks, and some plant substitutions: like drought-tolerant creeping thyme in lieu of dew-drenched moss.

Much of what we consider inscrutably mysterious teachings in Japanese expertise - from designing and building tea gardens, to conducting proper tea ceremonies, to that thing about the white cat statues that wave hello - is simply due to the unfamiliar Eastern way of teaching. Asian teachers teach by silence, instead simply doing. The student learns by watching, over and over again, sometimes for years and years, until the student learns how to see and to understand the subtle language of the art. “For it is a rule of this art that its experts do not explain the reason and cause of the things they do in this matter by words but by deeds only, for they leave everything to the consideration and reasoning of their pupils.” (Jao Rodrigues, Account of Sixteenth-Century Japan, quoted in Marc Peter Keane’s The Japanese Tea Garden).

Rikyu’s entire spoken words on teaching the tea ceremony he is largely credited with formalizing is quoted at the top of this post. Simplicity itself. Thus, a wise man once said, the student becomes the master.

All this is to report that we went to a few genuine Japanese gardens last week, notably the Huntington Garden’s Japanese Garden (pictured immediately above) and the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park in San Diego. The more I learn about tea gardens and Asian gardens in general, the more there is to learn, and the more pleasure I derive from the study. Although I love reading and copying and probably corrupting authentic Asian garden styles, I learn more from the pleasure of seeing the real things.