Tiger Glen Garden • Johnson Museum of Art • Ithaca NY

What follows is the story of the building of the Tirger Glen Garden.
Images of the finished garden can be found at this link: FINISHED IMAGES
Info about the mosses in the garden can be found at this link: MOSS

Over the course of the next few months — from July to September of 2011 — I will be uploading images and comments about the process of building this garden. The garden is based on a painterly theme, called the Three Laughers of the Tiger Glen, and expresses the message that peace and understanding are to be found beyond the confines of divergent philosophies.
The garden project was made possible through the generous patronage of Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan, both Cornell Class of 1960.
__________________________________________________________________________ — m. p. keane

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THE STORY

THE GARDEN

BROADER MEANING

SKETCHUP ANIMATION

This is a simple SketchUp animation that shows what the Tiger Glen Garden will look like. The tree and stones are stock images, of course, and will be different in the actual garden. The garden will be built at the Johnson Museum of Art from June to September, 2011.

Shakuhachi accompaniment by Keido (Preston Houser) http://keidokyoto.wordpress.com/

GARDEN PLAN

STONEWORK MOCKUP (Summer 2010)

The stones for the garden were collected and laid out in a full-scale mockup at Sticks and Stones Farm, CT, after which they were measured, marked, disassembled, palleted and shipped to Ithaca. In this photo, the mockup area has been prepped and the garden design marked on the ground with orange spray paint. ↓

The first stones are being set with the truck-mounted crane. ↓

The stones along the 'Tiger Glen' ravine have been completed. ↓

The flat stones for the terrace are being cut. The three standing stones that represent the "Three Laughers' are in place. ↓

The stones for the terrace have been almost all cut and fitted. The right side will be snap-line marked and trimmed to be straight. In the lower left corner are the water basin stone and its stepping stone. ↓

These small, weathered stones will evoke the feeling of flowing water at the bottom of the ravine. ↓

THE COURTYARD (May 13)

This is the sunken courtyard that will eventually hold the garden, the way it looks now,
before any work on the garden has been started. ↓

THE COURTYARD (June 3)

In the background is the original museum building, designed by I. M. Pei in 1973,
and in the foreground is the new wing, designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. ↓

A LITTLE BACKGROUND (July 5)

Back in 1985, during my first year living in Japan, I visited Nishihonganji temple in Kyoto and saw a garden called Kokei no Niwa (the Tiger Glen Garden). The temple literature at the time stated that the reason for the name of the garden was unclear, and surmised that it was related to the name of a nearby room, Tora no Ma (the Tiger Room). Some years later I came to know the Three Laughers story and, in 2002, wrote an article for the journal of the Nihon Teien Gakkai (the Academic Society of Japanese Garden) that proposed that the garden was representative of the Three Laughers parable. Specifically, that the huge temple roof in the background represented Mt. Lushan (the sacred mountain where Huiyuan lived), the Taimensho (Meeting Hall) from which the garden is viewed represented the world of human affairs, and the garden in between, with its symbolic bridge, represented the scene of the Tiger Glen. In fact there is no historical, documented proof that the garden at Nishihonganji was designed and created with the intention of recreating the Three Laughers story, but the idea stayed with me and finds fruition in the Johnson Museum garden. The Nishihonganji garden does not have three specific stones to represent the Three Laughers, but it does has many landscape boulders placed in what is often called the Japanese roccoco or baroque style. The Johnson garden will be a much smaller, and more minimal, expression.↓

EXCAVATION (June 20)

With windows installed in the architecture the courtyard was finally able to be excavated
in preparation for the garden. Next week we start setting stones. ↓

RAVINE FOUNDATION (June 27)

With basic utilites installed underground, the compacted gravel foundation for the stones was laid in.
The white stripes mark the inner curve of the ravine. ↓

SETTING STONES (June 29)

Despite the rain, we got half the stones along the ravine set using a large excavator
— conditions didn't allow the crane to make it on site. ↓

When Ôkubo Tadazane, lord of Odawara (present-day Kanagawa Prefecture) sent thousands
of fist-sized rounded beach stones to Emperor Kôkaku for his garden in 1815,
each one came wrapped individually in silk cloth. Our stones came in plastic shrink wrap
and pieces of old carpet... but no scratches, which is all that's important. ↓

SETTING STONES 2 (June 30)

Beautiful morning... and the last of the ravine stones are set.
Next week, we'll finish the details, backfill with gravel and topsoil,
and begin laying in the "stream stones". ↓

DRY STREAM 1 (August 2)

The thin stones that are embedded at the bottom of the ravine to evoke the feeling
of flowing water are being installed. In Japanese this is called a kare-nagare, or dry stream. ↓

DRY STREAM 2 (August 4)

The work on the thin stones that in the ravine that evoke the feeling of
flowing water is complete. Now the ravine will be wrapped and protected for a few weeks
while other work continues on decks and walkways around the edge of the garden. ↓

STONE TERRACE & BENCHES (August 23)

The two large pieces of granite that will serve as benches went in today. Each is 12' long and weighs about
4500 pounds (over 2 tons) so it was a careful operation not to tilt the machine. Then the work of laying out
the large flat stones for the terrace began, getting the pieces that were cut and fit in Connecticut
laid out once more in prepartation for setting tomorrow. ↓

STONE TERRACE 2 (August 24)

The large slabs of stone that make the terrace were set today and then the joints filled with grout.
Seems a simple enough task but it is more difficult than it looks because the stones are 5 to 6 feet long,
they each have their own natural imperfections, and the joints are only 1/8" wide.↓

DECK 1 (August 30)

The Ipe deck will be finished in the next few days.
First the heavy sleepers are leveled and bolted to the concrete foundations.↓

DECK 2 (Sept 2)

The Ipe deck is halfway finished — slow work scribing it to the granite bench.
At the same time, all the rough gravel infill in the garden is being excavated
in preparation for the planting of the pine tree, azaleas and moss.↓

GROUND PREP (Sept 6)

Half of the Ipe deck is cleaned up and finished. The grade has been brought up to the point where
a slightly acidic 'moss soil' can be laid down. The hole for the pine has been roughed out.
Now the hurricanes that have wreaked havoc elsewhere, have settled over us and
we'll be set back a couple days or a couple weeks.↓

SETTING STONES (Sept 9)

The stones that represent the Three Laughers, and the water basin stone, were lifted in by crane.
At the same time the masons adjusted some of the stones — like the stone bridge —
and mortared the bases of the standing stones.↓

CURVED DECK(Sept 11)

The Ipe deck on the north side of the garden was installed and cut in a curve.
The moss was delivered from Connecticut and a few sample flats laid in to see how they will look.↓

WATER SPOUT(Sept 16)

The water spout that will feed a stream of water to the water basin was installed today.
It was carved out of black locust by Chris Lowe, the carpenter who made Cornell's Baroque organ.
The scalloped pattern is imitative of the texture left by an adze, a finish that is called naguri in Japanese.↓

ANDROMEDA (Sept 22)

The water spout was connected to its pump and the Japanese andromeda that acts as a
partner planting (soe) was added, transplanted from the property of Mary Ann & Tim Colbert.
Everything is ready for the Japanese red pine to be planted on Saturday.↓

PINE (Sept 24)

We got lucky. It rained through the night but cleared by 7:00am when the crane arrived. It took a couple
of hours to position the crane and assemble the boom, then another hour and a half to lift the tree off
the flatbed truck, release the tied branches, restrap the tree in an upright position and set it in place.
The tree is a Tanyosho Japanese red pine — 'tanyosho' is properly pronounced 'tagyousho' in Japanese and
refers to the multiple stems of the tree. It came from the Martin Brooks Rare Plant Nursery and
was pruned into shape by Asher Browne.↓

PINE PRUNING (Oct 1)

Asher Browne spent a wet Saturday on a ladder, cleaning the pine of all its pine cones,
removing small twigs that were broken during transplanting and polishing all the branches of their loose grey,
flaky bark to reveal the red bark underneath. The tree looks much lighter and cleaner because of it.↓

MOSS PLANTING (Oct 3)

We began the planting of the moss that was brought up from Connecticut along with the stones.
Two species were used — Hair-cap moss, which is thicker and fluffy, and Star moss,
which makes a flat, bright-green surface. Many other species are also inadvertantly mixed in and
will flourish on their own as the garden matures.↓

GARDEN FINISHED (Oct 5)

We planted the last of the moss and cleaned the garden.
After 6 years of planning, design and construction, it is done. More photos anon.↓

More images of the finished garden can be found at this link: FINISHED IMAGES
Info about the mosses in the garden can be found at this link: MOSS