English garden/Japanese garden
yoshiko kataoka
I'm charmed with English garden. Please instruct me about western style
of gardens.
It is not so popular in Japan that it's hard to get plants,seeds,terra
cotta pots,wood
containers,garden furnishings,and information to compose English garden.
Most of traditional ones are imported, so that they are very expensive.
I'm glad to find
the Wichford's (Is this spelling right?)pots from U.K.,but biggest one
costs $5500 ( ! )
in Tokyo. Unbelievable!
Anybody English person, tell me how much does it costs in U.K.
Now, it may be that trading of gardening goods to Japan is profitable
business.
Trellises are new coming style in this year in Japan,also pots of
conifer.
The concepts of container garden and cottage garden are new to us.
Japanese traditional garden style established in 14-15c has been
inherited in close
relation with our culture and life styles for some hundreds years. We
Japanese have
started to compose the western style gardens in this one or two years.
My father has a small but perfect Japanese garden and he can make bonsai
from any tree
but his western style garden only golf lawn sodded is very poor.
It looks like the same case of about western furnishing. How many
Japanese people
are there who know about the 'Georgian style'? This is the other theme
for me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------
*information*
If you are interested in Japanese garden,bonsai or kado, maybe I can
answer your request.
I hold a license of kado Ikenobo -the most famous school of Japanese
flower arrangement
for 800 years.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------
Untill the First English style garden was open 5 years ago in Japan, the
botanical
gardens had no style ,only planted verious sorts of western vegetation.
Untill quite recentry, in Japanese house gardens we have not thought
about style, though
we have traditional form about Japanese vegetation and garden space.
So,I cannot recognise the difference between English style and French
one. Firstly,is there
difference between these style?Anybody tell me!
Though I've read the magazines-House&garden,maison et jardin,mon
jardin,and etc.etc.for
some years,ultimately I can look only photos because I have no knowledge
of the principle
of gardening.
So I've started to read John Brooks's The Garden Book.
How do you think about this book? And could you please recommend me the
books
I ought to read. How do you learn about garden style?
Too long! I'll finish.Thanks for reading my broken Tokyo English!
Anybody please tell me my mistakes in English.
Next time, I'm going to write about my dear plants.
I'm looking foward your E-mail!
--
yoshiko kataoka/tokyo,japan
100346
>--
>yoshiko kataoka/tokyo,japan
Yoshiko, Thanks for your charming article. I find it strange that you
should be trying to find out about western gardening as many of the
ideas (and plants) come from your part of the world anyway!! Japanese
gardening is very much admired here and many of us try to add a
japanese touch to our designs, just as some of the post impressionist
painters once did.
One could define (roughly) English gardening as an attempt to give a
natural look to a garden (which , in itself, is highly artifical, of
course). Traditionally French garden design was extremely formal and
geometric but, as you will see in French magazines, it is the English
style that is now much admired here in France.
John Brook's book is quite good in it's way, but it presents only his
personal ideas and I find myself disagreeing with him quite often.
Japanese potters (also greatly admired here) should be able to come up
with some good designs that would be quite acceptable in an English
garden setting - I would love to have a few myself!!
Susan Sanders
y-k...@st.rim.or.jp writes:
>So,I cannot recognise the difference between English style and French
>one. Firstly,is there
>difference between these style?Anybody tell me!
>Though I've read the magazines-House&garden,maison et jardin,mon
>jardin,and etc.etc.for
>some years,ultimately I can look only photos because I have no knowledge
>of the principle
>of gardening.
>So I've started to read John Brooks's The Garden Book.
This is an excellent book to start with. Another I would recommend is
Hugh Johnson's _Principles of Gardening_. You're already doing what I
consider to be the only way to learn to recognize various garden
styles--read about the various styles and try to analyze the pictures
presented alongside the discussions. It takes time--and a good eye--to
begin to appreciate the differences.
As to the differences between French and English styles--well, that's a
big question! In the first place, there is not a single English garden
style. I guess the English styles I'm most familiar with are the English
perennial borders (the traditional style for these is to have two
rectangular beds on either side of a lawn area, planted in mirror image
of each other), cottage gardens (thickly planted simple plants and herbs
planted somewhat randomly, often between and among irregularly shaped
paving stones--I'm sure someone else can provide a better description),
and what I can only think to call the Capability Brown style (there must
be another name for this)--large stretches of grass are the most familiar
feature. Of course, there are also the more recent island bed style
(irregularly-shaped, irregularly-placed perennial beds surrounded by
grass), and rock gardens, peat gardens, etc. French styles I know much
less well, other than the parterres (French knot gardens--very high
maintenance square or rectangular gardens, often in identical pairs or
fours, in which plants are planted and pruned into intricate designs,
like lace, over a background of gravel separating the sections of the
lace pattern (this is hard to describe; one glance at a picture and
you'll understand what I mean); these are best viewed from above to see
all of the pattern.
Many of us over here, of course, would like to have Japanese
gardens--many of the ones we see in pictures are truly magnificent--but
it's as difficult for us to do as the western styles seem to be for you.
It's hard to ignore what surrounds you and what you've been brought up
with.
-Sue Sanders
george howie
> one. Firstly,is there
> difference between these style?Anybody tell me!
> Though I've read the magazines-House&garden,maison et jardin,mon
> jardin,and etc.etc.for
> some years,ultimately I can look only photos because I have no knowledge
> of the principle
> of gardening.
> So I've started to read John Brooks's The Garden Book.