The importance of planning and planting bamboos and grasses in Japanese Zen style Feng Shui gardens.

"I can imagine a garden superimposed over the image of an orchestra. A garden is composed of various different elements and sophisticated details that converge to form a harmonious whole. Each element does not exert its individuality, but achieves a state of anonymity...and that is the kind of music that I would like to create."

T. Takemitsu

Japanese Garden designers

followed 3 basic principles when composing scenes. They are reduced scale, symbolisation, and "borrowed views". The first refers to the miniaturisation of natural views of mountains and rivers so as to reunite them in a confined area. This could mean the creation of idealised scenes of a mountain village, even within a city.

Symbolisation involves abstraction, an example being the use of white sand to suggest the sea. Designers "borrowed views" when they used background views that were outside and beyond the garden, such as a mountain or the ocean, and had them become an integral part of the scenic composition.

Ancient Japanese Gardens:

The earliest known gardens date back to the Asuka period (593-710) and the Naraperiod (710-794). In the Yamato area (now in Nara Prefecture), designers of imperial family gardens and those of powerful clans created imitations of ocean scenes that featured large ponds dotted with islands and skirted with "seashores".

It was at this time that Buddhism was brought to Japan from the continent by way of the Korean peninsula. Immigrants from there added continental influences to Japanese gardens, such as stone fountains and bridges of Chinese origin.

Kamakura period (1185-1333) that followed, saw the rise of a warrior class and the influence of Zen priests from China, bringing about changes in the style of residential buildings and gardens. It was not the custom of the military elite to hold splendid ceremonies in their gardens. Instead, they preferred to enjoy their gardens from inside the house, and gardens were designed to be appreciated primarily for their visual appeal. In this period, priest-designers or ishitateso (literally, rock placing monks), came to the fore.

It is said that the golden age of Japanese gardens occurred in the Muromachi period (l333-I568). Groups of skilled craftsmen called senzui kawaramono (mountain, stream, and riverbed people) were responsible for creating a new style of garden, known as karesansui (dry mountain stream). Heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism, these gardens are characterised by extreme abstraction: groups of rocks represent mountains or waterfalls, and white sand is used to replace flowing water.

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Japanese Zen Garden Bamboo and Grasses.

Semiarundinaria fastuosa. A tall elegant Bamboo

It is important to realise that the typical Japanese Zen garden has very much a different qualities to a garden with a Chinese Feng Shui theme both in composition and philosophy. In contrast to the geometrically arranged trees and rocks of a Western-style garden, the Japanese garden traditionally creates a scenic composition that, as artlessly as possible, mimics nature

The basic framework of the Japanese garden, according to one school of thought, is provided by rocks and the way they are grouped. Ancient Japanese, we know, believed that a place surrounded by rocks was inhabited by gods, thus naming it amatsu iwasaka (heavenly barrier) or amatsu iwakura (heavenly seat). Likewise, a dense cluster of trees was called himorogi (divine hedge); moats and streams, thought to enclose sacred ground, were referred to as mizugaki (water fences).

Usually Japanese style gardens use bamboos and grasses very sparingly. The general approach to a Japanese garden is basically evergreen with variegated and coloured pants on the whole conspicuous by their absence with the exception of a few carefully placed specimens such a spring flowering cherry blossom , a Japanese Acer palmatum purpreum, Magnolia or Camellia as a focal point,

In essence a Japanese garden is one that is unchanging tranquility therefore the permanency and stability of rocks and stone play a significant role as well as , artificial hills, ponds, and flowing water. Raked gravel or stone replaces the familiar lawn representing flowing rivers swirling around solitary rocks or island tufts of plain green grasses and sedges such as Hakenochola, Imperata, Deschampsia, Carex oshimensis, Carex comans, Ophiopogon Luzula Phalaris.

Ponds feature in Japanese gardens however they are not highly ornamental like the Chinese and quite small. The sound of running water being considered more important than the quantity. Empty space is considered as important as any of the other features and needs to be utilised or placed if that's possible with empty space? as precisely as the other features. The overall effect should be one composed so as to resemble a picture and, like a fine painting, invites careful and extended viewing

Although bamboo is held in great esteem in Japan in both philosophical and practical terms as a rule the use of bamboo is not featured in Japanese gardens to any excess, being limited to one or two smaller specimen plants of either delicate upright nature or of the short clumping varieties suitable for containers.

Japanese gardens can be classified into 2 general types: the tsukiyama (hill garden), which is composed of hills and ponds, and the hiraniwa l (flat garden), a flat area without hills and ponds. At first, it was common to employ the hill style for the main garden or a mansion and the flat style for limited spaces. The latter type, however, became more popular with the introduction of the tea ceremony and the chashitsu (tea-ceremony room).

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