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THE BROCHURE SERIES Japanese Gardens FEBRUARY, 1900 |
| PLATE XI | DAIMIO'S GARDEN AT SHINJIKU |
THE | ||
| 1900. | FEBRUARY | No. 2. |
JAPANESE GARDENS.
The Japanese garden is not a flower garden, neither is it made for the purpose of cultivating plants. In nine cases out of ten there is nothing in it resembling a flower-bed. Some gardens may contain scarcely 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 contained in a curiously shaped, shallow, carved box set in 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 whatever scale, all true Japanese gardening is landscape gardening; that is to say, it is a living model of an actual Japanese landscape.