Hill Gardens: The Garden of Suggestion

These in turn might be in the finished, the moderately finished, and the unfinished manner. The most finished landscape garden of the hill type contained five hills, each of which had a function to fulfill in relationship to the others. The leading hill was often a representation of Fuji-yama, the famous volcanic mountain, which was regarded as having the most perfect form any mountain could possess; the other hills were subservient to it, lending a sense of distance by showing beyond it or throwing it further back by slightly concealing it, or emphasizing its height by being in the same plane but below it. In conjunction with the hills there was usually a lake, not, as some mistakenly suppose, because Fuji-yama is associated with a lake, but because mountain and lake are complementary beauties. Upon the lake are certain islands, the Host's Island, the Guest's Island, and the Elysian Isle. Whereas the first two are both approachable by bridges or stepping-stones the last is not approachable at all, but lies unattainable in the centre of the lake. There are also trees. A principal tree, upright in form, perhaps an oak, acts as a sort of plumb-line whereby the gnarled and divergent forms of the more picturesque pines can be estimated at their correct degree of distortion. Most important of all are the stones. Of these scholars have isolated no fewer than 138 distinct kinds of stones of the first class, besides a number of others of markedly lesser significance. The chief division is between the upright and the recumbent types, the male and the female, the active and the passive, Yang and Yin. The ideal is five male to four female, a sort of golden proportion. However many or few stones a garden might have, three were indispensable: the Guardian Stone, the Stone of Worship and the Stone of the Two Deities. The first of these, large and upright, forms the visual pivot of the garden and is the insurance that there will be at least some unifying factor in the design. Other stones have traditional names associated with some supposed characteristic or the use to which they are put.