A Japanese Garden 
and marble 
terraces, all 
requiring so 
much expen- 
si V e care. 
T h e garden 
here illustra¬ 
ted is kept as 
near as pos¬ 
sible like a 
piece of nat¬ 
ural wood¬ 
land, the 
leaves in the 
fall remain 
around the 
roots with the 
double bene¬ 
fit of a mulch 
and fertilizer 
and in sum¬ 
mer the grass 
is occasional¬ 
ly c ut b u t 
never with 
the exact 
primness of the usual suburban lawn; it is essentially 
a rough natural garden, with hundreds of ferns 
growing out of the moss-covered rocks. It cov¬ 
ers about one third or one half of an acre, yet 
seems to be of much larger area; work was begun 
four years ago and continued each spring and 
fall for three years. Construction cannot be profit¬ 
ably carried on in winter on account of the cold 
and in mid-summer owing to the heat, for the 
rocks being 
so heavy 
make the 
work too ex¬ 
haustive. 
When de¬ 
signing a gar¬ 
den the Jap¬ 
anese con¬ 
siders three 
fundamental 
features, nat¬ 
ural condi¬ 
tions, rocks 
and water. 
The original 
natural con¬ 
ditions here 
consisted o f 
a hill over¬ 
grown with 
weeds over- 
looking a 
beautiful val¬ 
ley, three 
large trees 
and a spring of clear water bubbling out of the 
ground near the large oak and immediately run¬ 
ning back into the soil. These conditions prom¬ 
ised unusual advantages but required the guiding 
hand of the landscape artist, not the usual kind who 
would design a square tank-like pond surrounded 
with geometric rows of trees and the usual flower 
beds; an artist was needed to originate a scheme 
to fit in with the surroundings. Fortunately the 
THE TROUT POND AND AZALEA HILL 
THE TWO BRIDGES LANTERN AND STEPS 
65 
