When attempting to make a Japanese garden, the seemingly easy route is to import a few of the classic materials and call it a day. As we have seen in the first part of this series, however, that is a precipitous path and one most likely to lead to failure. Rather than focus on the materials of the garden, why not instead reexamine the fundamental meaning of the garden by taking as example several ways in which Japanese garden designers have thought of their works in the past.

Imagine it is 1000 years ago and we are in Heian-kyo (present-day Kyoto) where we find a courtier on the veranda of his wooden palace. For all its propriety, the architecture is simple; it is the garden that captivates. Even as the garden takes precedence over architecture, so poetry rules over both as the supreme art of the age. In order for this aristocrat to be accepted at court, he will need to master the existing body of poetry, both Japanese and Chinese (its forms, conceits, styles, and imagery) and the poetry of the day was, in brief, a means of self-expression that chose as its vehicle the imagery of nature.

It is here we find the link between poetry and the garden. The aristocrats who were designing the gardens were also steeped in images of nature as found in the poetry they knew so well. When they built gardens, they did so less from observance of wild nature, and more through interpretation of images of nature found in existing poetry. In turn, when they looked into the garden, they perceived it not only as visually beautiful but also as a series of poetic messages, finding allegorical references hidden in a rocky seashore, a field of reeds, or a lonely pine tree, all images known from poetry. The connection of poetry and the gardens is brought full circle as the courtiers found their way into the garden to write poems while gazing on scenes which were themselves originally derived from poetry. So for the courtier, the garden was a poem.

Now if we skip forward to the 16th century, we will leave behind the aristocrat's palace and find ourselves in a temple of the Zen sect of Buddhism. Inside the main hall, several black-robed priests sit discussing matters both secular and religious with their patrons, who are powerful military lords. The paper doors of the hall have been painted in ink wash with scenes of China, mountainous landscapes shrouded in mist. Even as poetry was king of the arts for Heian courtiers so do these ink paintings reign in the halls of Zen temples.

Just to the south of the main hall is a small courtyard within which the priests have built a garden, using only white sand, mountain boulders, and a few clipped shrubs; a three dimensional evocation of their favored ink landscapes. Not only does the garden capture the monotonal quality of the paintings in its palette of sand and stone, it also expresses the rhythms and asymmetric balance of the paintings, as well as the allegorical meanings contained therein. For the Zen priest, the garden was a painting.

If we add to the confluence of Zen priests and military lords an admixture of wealthy merchants, we have a recipe for the society that gave rise to the tea ceremony known by its understated appellation, cha-no-yu, or hot water for tea. The drinking of tea was proposed as a contemplative process in which the humility of the setting, the utensils used, and the art work displayed was intended to convey a message of spiritual simplicity. In order to allow guests to ready themselves for this event, both physically and inwardly, a preparation ground was created; and that was the tea garden. Properly called a roji, this garden is simply a path that leads from the street to tea house, evoking in that short space the sensory quality of a walk from town to the mountains. As with all other aspects of the tea world, the emphasis in the roji is on understatement. It is not intended to impress or excite but rather to still the mind of those that pass through in preparation for the simple act of receiving a bowl of tea. For the tea master, the garden was simply a path.

Whether you intend to faithfully replicate a Japanese garden (something which is dependent on the climate in your area more than anything) or hope to glean just the essence of the garden in order to create something new, these three ways of perceiving what a garden is (as a poem, a painting or a path) are hints for creating in a meaningful manner. Although, on average, we no longer give the place of importance to poetry that Japanese courtiers did, we do still revel in song; so music, and its lyrics, can easily be taken as a model for creating a garden. Or consider painting as a basis for gardening. If you wish to try a literal transplantation, study medieval Asian ink paintings as an inspiration for garden design. If, however, you would be more liberal than literal, take an empty, walled court (the frame of the court and a viewing room looking over it are essential components) and build into it a garden which is abstracted from any painting of your choice, reinventing the colors, rhythms, balance, as well as the meaning of the painting, with materials drawn from nature. Or perhaps view the garden as a path which is designed so that it evokes a prescribed spiritual or aesthetic change in those who move along it. While the roji was intended to calm and sensitize one to the wabi aesthetic, your garden-path might lead somewhere entirely different. No matter which method you choose, looking at the fundamental question of what a garden is becomes the most certain route for adding depth of meaning to your design