138 AMERICAN 
safer if one would have it constructed on cor- 
rect lines, to give the building of even the tini- 
est Japanese garden into the care of a native 
craftsman. 
The American-Japanese gardens, which pre- 
sent interesting studies in various sections of 
the country to-day, almost invariably include 
numerous flowers with their manifold orna- 
mental accessories—the Japanese azaleas, the 
dwarfed plum trees and many novel water 
plants being the prime favorites; but travelers 
in Japan frequently note the fact that the na- 
tive gardens are not necessarily flower gardens, 
neither are they always made for the purpose 
of cultivating plants. In nine cases out of ten 
there is nothing in the smaller plots to resemble 
a flower-bed. Some gardens may contain 
merely a sprig of green; some (although these 
are exceptional) have nothing green at all, 
and consist entirely of rocks, pebbles and sand. 
Neither does the Japanese garden require any 
fixed allowance of space; it may cover one or 
many acres; it may be only ten feet square; it 
may, in extreme cases, be much less, and be con- 
tained in a curiously shaped, shallow, carved 
box set on a veranda, in which are created 
tiny hills, microscopic ponds and rivulets 
spanned by tiny humped bridges, while queer, 
wee plants represent trees, and curiously 
formed pebbles stand for rocks. But on what- 
ever scale, all true Japanese gardening is land- 
scape gardening; that is, it is a living model 
of an actual Japanese landscape. 
It is an exceptional privilege to study at first- 
hand the significance of all the details that go 
to make up the true Japanese gardens, which 
have now become the fad in this country. I 
have been informed by an excellent authority 
on the subject that “through long accumulation 
of traditional methods, the representation of 
natural features in a garden model has come 
to be a highly conventional expression, like all 
Japanese art; and the Japanese garden bears 
somewhat the same relation to an actual land- 
scape that a painting of a view of Fuji-yama 
by the wonderful Hokusai does to the actual 
scene—it is a representation based upon actual 
and natural forms, but so modified to accord 
with accepted canons of Japanese art, so full of 
mysterious symbolism only to be understood by 
the initiated, so expressed, in a word, in terms 
of the national artistic conventions, that it costs 
the Western mind long study to learn to appre- 
ciate its full beauty and significance. 
“Suppose, to take a specific example, that in 
the actual landscape upon which the Japanese 
gardener chose to model his design, a pine tree 
grew upon the side of a hill. Upon the side 
of a corresponding artificial hill in his garden 
he would, therefore, plant a pine, but he would 
not clip and trim its branches to imitate the 
shape of the original, but, rather, satisfied that 
by so placing it he had gone far enough toward 
the imitation of Nature, he would clip his gar- 
den pine to make it correspond as closely as 
circumstances might permit, with a conventional 
ideal pine tree shape, as though buffeted and 
gnarled by the fierce winds of centuries.” 
These native craftsmen will also assure the 
owners of the gardens they are constructing 
that there are ideal shapes not only for the 
HOMES AND GARDENS 
A favorite type of stone bridge 
April, 1911 April, 1911 
An exquisite bit of Work in a secluded spot 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 139 
Guards at the entrance 
pines, but also for the mountains, lakes, water- 
falls, stones, and numerous other accessorie 
and it is of the utmost importance that the gar- 
dener should take cognizance of a multitude of 
religious and ethical conyentions in worki 
out his design. They call attention to the fact 
that the streams must follow certain cardinal 
directions, that the nine spirits of the Buddhist 
pantheon must be symbolized in the number and 
disposition of the principal rocks. That the 
trees and stones must be carefully studied as to 
their relations to each other and to the general 
garden scheme, and only such combinations 
made as are regarded as ‘‘fortunate.”’ And woe 
to the unhappy gardener who does not care- 
fully study their symbolic relations and who 
carelessly introduces what is considered an un- 
lucky combination. 
So conscientious are the Oriental garden 
builders that they give the same care in regard 
to symbolic details to their “foreign” land- 
scape construction on American country-seats 
as in their native country. No matter what the 
size, form or finish—whether it is larg 
small, mountainous or flat, rough or elaborate 
—the true landscape garden must be made to 
contain, in some form, rocks and water and 
vegetation, in connection with various architec 
tural accessories in the form of indispensable 
lanterns, bridges and stepping-stones, while, in 
the more elaborate gardens are introduced pa- 
godas, wwater-basins, tea-houses, boundary 
fences, or hedges of bamboo, and fancifully 
roofed gateways. 
The careful ribution of garden vegeta- 
tion is considered quite as important as the ar- 
rangement of the principal rocks and stones 
and the contours of land and water. The East- 
ern travelers who have taken cognizance only 
of the grounds of the larger temples of Japan 
will probably fail to realize the significance of 
tree grouping in regulation landscape garden- 
ing. In the temple gardens, groves and ave- 
nues of trees are frequently planted in rows, 
with the same formality adopted in Western 
gardens, while in the true landscape gardens 
such formal arrangements are never resorted 
to. Not only are the trees arranged in open 
and irregular groups instead of being planted in 
rows—when several are planted together—but 
the rules for planting these clumps or groups 
are rigidly determined. ‘To the uninitiated it 
is difficult to understand just why these tree 
clumps must be disposed in double, triple or 
quadruple combinations, while these combina- 
tions may be again regrouped according to 
recognized rules based upon contrasts of form, 
line and color of foliage; but all these rules are 
understood and most carefully adhered to by 
the student of Japanese garden craft. And it 
is found on comparing the grouping of tiny 
dwarfed trees of miniature gardens with the 
arrangement in larger spaces, that the same 
rules have been followed. 
The disposition and the use of the various 
architectural accessories of the garden is also 
formally regulated, and the variety in garden 
building is found mainly in the form of these 
accessories, as the pagodas, lanterns, water- 
basins, wells and bridges are fashioned in many 
curious and beautiful designs, while the enclo- 
ge or 
