26o How to Make a Flower Garden 



with my father I ex])lored many ancient gardens of the Daimios; and of 

 these I remember best an extinct garden, grown to seed, grewsome and 

 beautiful, the ]3on(l a tarn grown over with a green scum. I learned to 

 love those gardens all, from Hamagoten, the Emperor's summer garden 

 by the sea, to the humblest effort of the farmer to merge a stone, a shrine, 

 and a pine tree into a landscape. 



And so when 1 made my home in America I longed for a genuine 

 Japanese garden. My first one I built behind a school building, m the 

 woods, on a beetling chft' of limestone. Jutting over the rocks I put 

 my summer house. It was fifteen feet square, and the veranda commanded 

 a vista cut through the tree-tops of the valley below. A sliding window 

 in the back gave a glimpse of the dense woods which opened up into a long 

 vista to the north. Instead of paper shutters I used ground glass, as better 

 withstanding the weather. The room had its regulation tokonoma and its 

 chigaidana — the first an alcove for the hanging scroll, the second a recess 

 for shelves arranged /'// echelon. The walls were first plastered smooth, and 

 then I overlaid them with plaster of Paris, using my bare hands to describe 

 cloud patterns as I approached the ceiling and sea-wave patterns on nearing 

 the floor. Among the waves I set shells and mosses. The whole was built 

 of carefully seasoned pine of selected grain, and oiled to give the appearance 

 of age. I cleared a space of about fifty feet square in front of the summer 

 house, and laid out what is technically known as a "flat garden." I dug 

 out an old brook-bed that meandered through it, and covered the bottom 

 with white pebbles, bordering it with rocks and ferns. A bamboo fence 

 and a rustic bridge completed this plateau. 



But I tired of this garden, because I wanted to see and hear real water, 

 and that was impossible on the cliff; so I dragged my little house down to 

 the campus below the school, against a fringe of trees, and remodelled it. 

 I opened up another side for more ground-glass shutters, and added a moon 

 window with cloud slats across its face. I abandoned the flat type of garden 

 and composed something approaching the conventional "hill garden," 

 Because of the difference in the conditions of climate and environment, 

 I found it impossible to conform to all the traditions and laws of the classical 

 Japanese garden Therefore I treated my subject freely, and followed the 

 spirit rather than the letter of the conventions. 



The classical garden, like a sonnet, is governed by special laws of harmony 

 and rhythm. It must have its five hills, its ten trees, and its fourteen stones 



