304 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



August, 1908 



The Japanese Garden of " Yademos' 



The Country Seat of Charles Pfizer, Esq., at Bernardsville, New Jersey 



By John Foster Carr 

 Photographs by Arthur Hewitt 



JAPANESE garden is not a garden at all 

 as we understand gardens. It is a land- 

 scape in miniature, modeled and arranged 

 to the strict rule of Japanese art. It is 

 formal with the extreme conventionality of 

 the Orient. It abounds in the grotesque. 

 It may be complete with hills, lake, play- 

 ing fountain and tiny dwarf trees within the limits of a two- 

 foot square. It may be extended to a small park. Patience 

 and a generous money allowance are needed for its building, 

 and a Japanese gardener is an absolute essential. Without 

 him no study of books or photographs will much avail. The 

 incongruous will inevitably creep in, and the result will be a 

 failure of imitation. Remodeling in spots will be attempted 

 and will end with the conscientious in rebuilding from the 

 beginning. This is the story of nearly all of our Japanese 

 gardens. It is especially true of what is perhaps the largest 

 of them all at Bernardsville, N. J. But with reconstruction 

 elaborately completed under two cunning Japanese artists, 

 Mr 1 . K. Takahashi, a landscape gardener, and Mr. T. 

 Uyeda, a carver and carpenter, it is now as perfect in detail 

 as is possible in our western land. 



Three acres and a half were chosen for the attempt — one- 

 third of it a piece of marshland spreading from a spring. 

 The marsh was dug out to a depth varying from two to six 

 feet, forming an irregularly shaped lake with a dozen wind- 

 ing brook-like arms. The excavated soil was used to form 

 the smoothly mounded hills and mountains — the highest ot 

 them being raised to a height of about twenty-five feet above 

 water level. The whole garden was designed to give the 

 greatest possible number of surprises in new views, so that 

 the widest view — from the mountain top — probably does 



not show more than one half of the garden. The central 

 ideas of treatment seem to be formalism and a kind of 

 balanced irregularity. The tops and the sides of the hills, 

 as well as the edges of paths, are everywhere most carefully 

 rounded, and the grass is close shaven. The rocks that are 

 used always have a decorative value, and show smooth sur- 

 faces or the picturesque roughness of weather-worn stone. 

 New and roughly broken stone is invariably rejected. The 

 whole garden is inclosed by an eight-foot, hooded, wooden 

 fence of bamboo and paneled cypress, charred and rubbed 

 to a hard and beautiful fire-stained surface by brushes of 

 coarse fiber. The timbered entrance looks like a copy of 

 one of the city gates of Tokyo. 



The single spring diverted into a half-dozen streamlets 

 sends its waters winding about through the miniature hills, 

 tumbling in cascades and waterfalls until they are lost in the 

 brook-like arms of the lake. These are crossed by bridges 

 of many kinds, from neatly leveled and spaced stepping 

 stones and trimmed rectangles of stone flags set at a zig-zag 

 on pillars of masonry, to elaborate hooped and arched struc- 

 tures of wood. A number of the latter, roughly but strongly 

 built of unhewn timbers, are floored with bamboo laid like 

 our old corduroy roads, then covered with earth and gravel, 

 and edged with a roll of very fine leafless twigs, bundled 

 and bound tightly together. The edges of the greater sheet 

 of water are lined with large smooth-faced stones, or piles 

 of small logs sawn squarely off and driven into the mud to 

 within a few inches of the surface of the water. The lake 

 is swarming with Japanese goldfish, with their drooping, 

 fanlike tails — things of beauty, and at the same time things 

 of highest use, for they greedily devour the mosquito 

 "wiggler." 



An Arrangement of Dwarf Trees 



Thuya Obtusa Nana 



