It is rather to the Hira-niwa, or Flat Gardens, that I allude, made in the small enclosures at the back of private houses or tea-houses in towns, or even in the actual courts, no space being apparently too small for the construction of one of these little fresh-looking and artistic gardens. How superior to the dusty, neglected back garden or court of a European house, too often only a piece of waste ground where the rubbish of the house accumulates, the space being condemned as too small for a garden. I can recall visions of many a tiny court no more than twenty feet square, within whose limits were compressed a liliputian pond, fed with clear water by the overflow of the water-basin; a dwarf pine, the soul of every Japanese garden, which in conjunction with a few small evergreen shrubs sheltered a moss-grown lantern. Some small rocks and a few foliage or water plants in a tuft by the water’s edge, were the sole materials used for the making of this court-garden. Stepping-stones, let into the beaten earth, led from the step of the verandah to the edge of the pond, ending in one stone larger than the rest, suggesting the Stone of Worship, or the Stone of Amusement, in case there should be any goldfish in the pond. As these little courts are kept profusely watered, being sprinkled out of a wooden ladle several times a day in the hottest days of summer, the effect is always damp and cool, the mossy stones are always fresh and green, however fierce the heat may be. The variety in the actual form of these gardens seemed infinite; in some the pond was omitted, and the suggestion of water and dampness came from the rustic garden well or the ornamental water-basin, behind which always stands a portion of screen-fencing of elaborate design. When the area is not quite so limited, bridges will be introduced to cross the pond, possibly consisting only of a single stone slab supported on a natural piece of rock, or a granite bridge slightly curved in form, or perhaps only the suggestion of a bridge, formed of a branch of juniper or some flat close-growing evergreen trained in a curve across the water. According to the size of the ground, so these gardens will increase in elaboration of their design, and many an enclosure at the back of a merchant’s house in Kyoto or Osaka has been transformed into a perfect specimen of Hira-niwa.
One I recall which always gave me as much pleasure as the most extensive landscape garden in the country. The lake was of the prescribed form known as the Running Water shape, fed by a fast-flowing stream which came in at the far end of the garden over the regulation Cascade Stones; a garden arbour of elaborate form overlooked the lake, in which stood the “Elysian Isle” with its pine-tree
A LANDSCAPE GARDEN
growing out of the rock, and a few azalea bushes filling the interstices of the stone, forming a most attractive feature of the garden; banks there were planted with more azaleas; pines, kept dwarfed to about two feet in height, grew out of cushions of thick moss; bridges crossed and re-crossed the stream; stepping-stones, discs, and label stones guided our feet as we wandered about at leisure. There were the two garden entrances, and even the back entrance, or Sweeping Opening, was a thing of beauty. Every detail of this garden had been first carefully thought out, and then as carefully carried into execution.
The landscape gardener in Japan is no gardener in the sense that we regard a gardener in the West—a cultivator of flowers: he is a garden artist; he leaves none of his effects to chance; so carefully are his plans made that before the first sod of the new garden has been turned, he knows exactly how the garden will look when completed. He will see in his mind’s eye the appointed place for every tree, every stone, which is to be used in its composition. I could not help thinking that if more thought were given to the planning of our English gardens there might be something more complete and satisfying to the eye than the meaningless gardens—often laid out by the owner of the house, who by the wildest stretch of imagination could not be called a garden artist—which too often surround our English homes. Our gardens are made beautiful in summer by the wealth and profusion of their flowers; but when the winter comes and the beds are shorn of their summer glories, the deficiencies of the plan of the garden are laid bare, and might well give us food for thought through the long winter months.
CHAPTER IV
NURSERY GARDENS—DWARF TREES AND HACHI-NIWA
A nursery garden in Japan may be called a revelation in the art of pruning. A singular idea exists in the minds of many people, that all the trees in Japan are like the dwarf specimens they have occasionally seen in England on a nurseryman’s stand at a flower-show, and frequently they display surprise, not unmixed with incredulity, when assured that such is not the case. I would recommend those unbelievers to take a walk in the cryptomeria avenues at Nikko, among the camphor groves of Atami, or to wander through the pine-woods which clothe the hillsides above Kyoto, when they would see for themselves the magnificence of the trees, untouched by the pruning knife of the gardener. The Japanese bestow as much time and care on the trees in their gardens as the Western gardener would give to his choicest flowers. The gardener’s ideal tree is not the ordinary tree of the forest, but the abnormal specimen which age and weather have twisted and bent into quaint and unusual shapes. Here, in the nursery garden, we shall find specimen trees; old trees it is true, but trees giving proof that art has had to improve upon nature, as scarcely a single tree in the whole collection—waiting, possibly, to transform the new garden of a nouveau riche into an ancestral home—will have been allowed to follow its own inclination of growth and shape.