April, 1911 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
The Japanese Garden in America 
By Phoebe Westcott Humphreys 
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late years led to pleasing results in the 
reproduction of the best types of 
Oriental gardens. Less than a decade 
ago an authority on landscape garden- 
ing lamented the fact that Americans 
are slow in appreciating the true art of gardening in re- 
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gard to the idea of fitness and harmony in details, as evi-. 
denced by Japanese landscape artists; and the statement 
was then made, that while there have been a few attempts. 
at copying Japanese methods, there is not a genuine Japa- 
nese garden, constructed-upon true Oriental principles, to 
be found upon any of our noted American country-seats. 
Now, all this has changed. Within the past few years many 
famous gardens have been constructed by competent Jap- 
anese craftsmen, who have given their entire lives to the 
study of the religious and symbolic, as well as the pictur- 
esque features of landscape gardening, and who have car- 
ried out with painstaking care upon Occidental acres the 
artistic details that have made Oriental gardens of world- 
wide fame. ; 
The study of Japanese manners and customs, of home 
decorations and gardening features, first became of promi- 
nent interest in this country in connection with the early 
world’s fair. The Chicago fair of-1893 presented one of 
its most charming features in the form of a complete 
Japanese village, con- 
structed and ornamented 
with regard to all the tra- 
ditional details for which 
our Eastern neighbors are 
famous. Japanese villages 
then became the fad, not 
only for later ‘‘fairs,’’ but 
Japanese tea-rooms~ and 
Japanese gardens on an 
elaborate scale were built 
as side attractions at fa- 
mous summer resorts; and | 
an increasing interest in 
the quaint stone lanterns, 
the curiously dwarfed 
trees, the winding rock- 
bound waterways crossed 
by novel bridges, and all 
the significant details of 
garden accessories asso- 
ciated with traditional and 
legendary lore of the Jap- 
anese attracted the atten- 
tion of owners of splendid 
country-seats, who speedily 
demanded the services of 
Oriental landscape artists 
to thus decorate a portion 
of their extensive acres. 
In some instances, of 
late, Japanese gardens have 
been transplanted bodily 
from a summer resort 
(where they have flour- 
ished for a time and then 
Dwarf trees and water-worn rocks cover the little islands 
became unprofitable) to decorate a home-garden of an 
enthusiastic nature student, asin the case of the quaint 
and charming bit of old Japan now owned by Mr. Mat- 
thias Homer. In other instances, the owners of still more 
extensive acres have not only employed famous Japanese 
artists to lay out ideal gardens, but they have themselves 
become interested in importing the dwarfed and curiously 
stunted and gnarled old trees direct from the mother coun- 
try to decorate their unique gardens. Mr. Charles Pilling 
was one of the first to follow this fad, and the century- 
old pines, and many novel plants and trees measuring only 
-a foot or two in height and numbering their years by cen- 
turies, now decorate his Japanese garden nook imported 
by himself. Again, the owners of extensive country-seats 
have given all the details of importing the paraphernalia 
and the construction of their Oriental gardens to the care 
of the Japanese craftsmen who excel in this work, while 
taking an intense personal interest in all the details of 
their new possessions, growing from year to year, like the 
garden of Mr. Louis Burk, in which he has watched the 
tedious process of construction for three years or more with 
ever-increasing delight (though not taking any direct part 
in its construction) and who is now planning to greatly 
increase its area. There is a fourth class who own won- 
derful Japanese gardens, who look upon them simply as an 
additional attraction for decorating a portion of their 
ample areas, and after being assured that the garden build- 
ing is under the supervision 
of a practical Japanese 
artist, who will ‘do the 
thing up right,” they give 
no further concern to this 
than they do to the Italian 
gardens and other formal 
gardens that are appropri- 
ately placed on various se- 
cluded portions of their 
grounds. But no matter 
what the object that influ- 
enced the owner to include 
Japanese gardening in deco- 
rating his home grounds, 
the interest thus evidenced 
has grown until many are 
becoming familiar with the 
true art of gardening in 
Japan. 
There is still another 
class of enthusiasts upon 
this subject who have at- 
empted to build their own 
Oriental gardens, fashioned 
after those that they have 
studied on their travels in 
Japan, or by studying the 
models already established 
in this country; but in 
every instance it is noted 
that such gardens fail to be 
successful unless one under- 
stands the seemingly end- 
less details that govern true 
Oriental gardening. It is 
