Design Ingenuity: The Garden of Suggestion

Because they needed to scale down natural landscapes and because they wanted to make use in them of the attractive distorted shapes that competitive nature some-times produces, the Japanese evolved a craft similar in kind to Western topiary: that of producing dwarfed trees. Again the logical mind that took the matter to such extreme limits went on to produce those small tray gardens in which one's admiration for the skill and patience necessary inevitably detracts from an appreciation of more enduring qualities. The best remains of the earlier gardens are near Kyoto. Fifty years ago a visitor described a secluded monastic garden there of great antiquity. `First a little forecourt, and beyond the sacred spot. At the first glance what did it consist of? A few stone lanterns, almost diminutive in size, to be in keeping with the rest of the garden; some so buried in velvety moss that their shape seemed almost altered by the thickness of their green canopy; a few curiously shaped and fantastic stones, also with their covering of grey lichen and moss; some old gnarled and twisted shrubs, and two or three little toy stone bridges. Not a single flower to break the severity of the outline. This garden lay in a pine wood and after a while she noticed that the pine needles lay only on the ground; none were on a rising mound, nor on the lamps, nor lodged in the bushes; `and then I realized the cleverness, the ingenuity of the idea the pine needles represented the water, each pine seemed to be in its place under the little bridge; they came perfectly smooth and always following each the same way like flowing water. Presently some projecting point or little island in this fancy lake would break their regularity, and they would be turned and twisted to represent the current of the water... whoever had the patience to arrange this carpet? It seemed almost as if it might be the work of someone undergoing a penance, being condemned to keep these pine needles in perfect order; one puff of wind might mean hours of work to their guardian.' To eyes of this kind there was only ingenuity, but one may doubt whether those who for several hundred years rearranged the pine needles saw only that.