House and Garden 
FLOWER-VIEWING IN PRINCE HOTTA S GARDEN 
Mukojima, which claims to have beautiful 
blooms tor every month in the year. 
In all these gardens the great effort is to 
secure naturalness ; to give every plant and 
tree the kind of surroundings most con¬ 
genial to it, in an (ideal) wild state. Thus 
azaleas must grow on slopes, meadow plants 
near water; certain pines must always lean 
over rocks or walls, and so on. Without 
doubt these distinctions often degenerate 
into mere conventions ; but after all, it is 
naturalness, and not artificiality, that is the 
keynote of the gardener’s work in Japan ; 
and how marvelously he succeeds in attaining 
it one only realizes after becoming familiar 
with the real landscapes he studies so closely. 
I cannot take space for anything but the 
names of a few more of the well-known 
gardens, such as Prince Hotta’s, near the bay 
in I okyo, a very beautiful specimen of the 
more conventional type; the grounds of the 
Imperial Palace, once belonging to Tokugawa 
Shoguns; the modern, half-English park of 
Count Okuma, who delights in growing 
chrysanthemums ; the strange old plum trees 
at Sendai ; the charming palace garden in 
Kyoto, residence of generations of cloistered 
emperors and early home of the present 
Emperor and Empress ; the monastery gar¬ 
dens in the old capital, and the castle park 
at Hikone on Lake Biwa, now used for a 
tea-house; or still farther south, the beauti¬ 
ful lawns and groves and stream at Taka¬ 
matsu on the Inland Sea, where there was 
once a fine castle now destroyed, and where 
the palmettos rival those at Okayama. The 
photographs give an idea of some of these, 
but nothing can render the marvelous blend¬ 
ing of greens in the rich foliage, nor the 
warm grays of weather-worn rocks, nor the 
peculiar melting quality of the light—as it 
were the atmosphere of Devonshire over a 
half tropical vegetation. At best, both the 
illustrations and 1 can only explain some¬ 
thing of the characteristics of the landscape, 
whether natural or manufactured, and show 
how large a held of fascinating study lies 
open among the gardens of Japan. 
8 i 
