2026 Winter Lecture: Reflections on Japanese Gardens with Drew Schuyler

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:03]Hi everybody. I'm Drew Skyler. I'm the assistant head gardener at Untermire Gardens here in Yoners, New York. And I'm here to talk to you about a trip I took last October of 2025 to Japan where I traveled and studied and looked at uh many, many different gardens through seven different cities. And I guess the first question really is why did I go to Japan? um what is it about Japanese gardens that drew me there and and sort of inspire us to go visit them? And and my response to that is almost why not Japan? Um it's an incredibly alluring culture. Uh the gardens themselves uh seem to insert their influence in a lot of different designs and I was really eager to see these gardens in person um and specifically to learn about what I was looking at, how to look at it and to immerse myself in the culture while I did so. So I came up with this uh five-week trip that began with a two-eek seminar hosted by the University of the Arts in Kyoto. Um they have a research center for Japanese gardens and the educators there led us on tours and gave us lectures and really grounded our understanding of the Japanese gardens we were looking at together. And then I followed that seminar by 3 weeks of self-guided travel uh visiting all different kinds of gardens around the country especially and in particular traditional historic Japanese landscapes. Um and my goal with this trip was to bring this education back home to Untermire to our design work here. Um and also to our education of staff and development of our horicultural practices and also to give this talk actually um and I really wanted to develop sort of a personal design philosophy that included these Japanese influences. Um and those were my motivations and I should say that I'm not a scholar or an expert. uh by any means. I've only been to Japan this one time. I don't speak the language. Um I was there for five short weeks in in one season. So in that sense, you know, I'm really speaking from a snapshot point of view. Uh but I really think that my the combination of the seminar and the travel uh and then further research when I got back gave me a pedestal to stand on in some way to at least speak to some of the things I saw and give some response to them. And I can't really go on any further without uh thanking Shant Clear Garden for sponsoring this trip and for uh supporting it in collaboration with the consery and also to Timothy Tilman and Steve Burns and the rest of the staff for encouraging me and supporting me on this trip. So with all that said, let's go to Japan together and learn about these gardens.

[00:03:03]So I was trained uh in western formal garden design. I went to Longwood Gardens professional gardener program and I studied abroad in England at Great Dickster. And we often see in these western formal garden designs the use of natural elements to enforce symmetry or to enforce an architectural structure on the land itself. And that is often contrasted with the naturalistic and asymmetrical Japanese garden designs. In these gardens, um, gardens will bridge rather than extend the man-made world into the natural world. And they seek or emphasize man's union with nature.

[00:03:50]And yet, when you visit Japan, you're sort of confronted with this tension between modernity and tradition, between east and west. And modern Japan offers many surreal juxtapositions of of these things right up against one another. And yet this aesthetic and world view that Japanese Japan espouses prioritizes imperfection and asymmetry through design. So oftent times I would encounter the opposite influence or the opposing influence framed within the whole picture. And there's this constant leaning towards agedness and simplicity and off-centeredness.

[00:04:30]There's always a crooked path where there could be a straight one.

[00:04:36]And the garden art of Japan is heavily influenced by Chinese landscape painting. So in reality, we really need to take China garden design 101 to fully understand Japanese garden design. Um, but that's not this lecture. And I learned a lot that the design vocabulary of these Japanese gardens developed from these paintings and their influence on the culture. So if you look at these paintings, you can see the lakes and the ponds, the bridges, the waterfalls in the background, the trees sculpted into unique forms and the rocks arranged. And because of these historic influences and how they carry through the ages, we kind of need to do this historical review of all of these various elements. what are their symbolism? What is the context?

[00:05:24]And who are the garden artists that are using these elements um through the different eras? And as we visit the historical record, you know, we should pay attention to the design features and their developments and how they inform the composition of the scenery and the organization of the space. And I think within all of this, there are lessons for any garden um no matter where you might be designing it. But first, we really have to go back about a thousand years. And the native Japanese Shinto religion um is a fascinating one. It's very beautiful. And niwa or garden, the Japanese word for garden was the word first used to designate space for kami or spirits found in nature. So these could be sac sacred trees, stones, or beautiful places that are often marked with rope.

[00:06:15]And they're often also um framed with this Tory gate that you must walk past or under to access the sacred object or space. And the Shinto religion um really advocates for faithfulness and love of country and a healthy relationship with the kami and all the different natural phenomena. And white gravel is used to designate these sacred spaces. And so we later you see this white gravel being used in all sorts of important designated spaces throughout history um including palaces and gardens.

[00:06:54]Also in ancient Japan, the capital itself was based on the Chinese capital and the temples were built in the outside surrounding hills and Korean craftsmen were brought in to helped construct imperial gardens in Japan in the Chinese style. And so while the capital was in Kyoto for nearly a thousand years, it started in N. And both of those places were constructed using these Chinese models.

[00:07:23]Some of the archaeological e excavations in Nar reveal these original ancient Japanese garden designs. And specifically, we see uh these winding stream gardens which are directly lifted from Chinese garden traditions. And these winding streams would host uh these parties, these winding stream parties where people would sit on the edge of the stream. And somebody would float a cup of rice wine, sake, down the river. And the person would have to recite a poem before the sake reached them. And then when the sake reached them, if they had successfully completed their assignment, they would drink. um or perhaps they would drink as a forfeit for not doing so. Um but these types of parties were were a Chinese tradition that were imported into Japan and we can see that in the evidence of these garden creations. We also see the suama or this pebble beach design that emerges around this time. And the pebble beach represents the coastline of Japan. It has this naturally curving shoreline lined with rocks and pebbles. And we see this pebble beach design repeat throughout garden design history um through the ages. And it's an important development of this time that starts to pull away from that Chinese influence.

[00:08:50]Also in the 11th century, we see the publishing of the sakuti. So this is the oldest gardening manual um ever created that that we have evidence of and in it the buildings and the water features and the garden features themselves are urged to be oriented following Chinese geommancy which is basically funue. It's theqi, the energy of of of objects. And specifically, water should flow from the northeast of the property to the southwest. And stones should be placed and arranged so as to honor their character or their powers. And garden making should be an attempt to construct something that would encourage people to recall the natural landscape. Right? So gardens of the past should be studied.

[00:09:41]And while it is important to express your own feelings in designing a garden, you should keep in mind the climate and the aspects of the land where the garden is to be constructed. And the quote I loved from this book was in order to make a proper garden, one should travel widely and become acquainted with beautiful scenes in nature. So the Japanese were always looking to their surrounding environment as the source of inspiration for their idealized garden pictures.

[00:10:12]We see the emergence of this Shinden style architecture around this time for no for nobility. And in the Shinden style, there's a main hall which is surrounded with white sand spread towards a large pond with one or more islands. And there are bridges that connect the different landforms and shores. And the pond edge will have pebbles and rocks and standing rock arrangements. The stream will run through the property from northeast to southwest. And there would be simple plants used to sort of decorate the scene. And while we don't have any existing gardens from this period that showcase this style, we do have existing temples um which date back to this era and they offer us some clues about how these places might have been arranged.

[00:11:00]And the temples of this time um were pure land Buddhist temples. So pure land Buddhism considers human culture itself as a preparation for death. Right? And it attempts to express or realize um a promise of paradise after death. And at Bodto Inn um which is this temple here, the hall, the main hall faces east and it contains this enormous statue of Amida Buddha, the lord of the western paradise. And you view this hall with the sun setting behind it. So in essence, you're looking towards Buddha.

[00:11:35]You're looking towards paradise and salvation. And biodto means equality. So this is the temple of equality. All people have the same right to this salvation.

[00:11:45]And you can see the pebble beaches with the pond in front and the stream coming from behind. So we can sort of get a sense of how these spaces were constructed at that time. And the stone lantern in the front of this temple dates back to around the same time as well, centuries. Um, and these temples were originally used, uh, these, uh, lanterns, sorry, were originally used to light paths. Um, but then they eventually took on the symbol of offering to the Buddha. So, we start to see the lantern itself being used as um, an ornamental but sort of processional religious symbol.

[00:12:28]As we move into the medieval era, we see the rise of Zen Buddhism and Zen Buddhism's influence on gardens in Japanese culture.

[00:12:39]So, Zen Buddhist religious culture moves away from the pure land salvation afterlife towards a vigorous discipline and self-control of this life. And during this period, Zoen published the first Japanese illustrated gardening manual and it formalized a lot of design techniques that had been established over the centuries. And in it, he wrote that rocks will form the backbone of every garden design. Rocks are the first items to be set prior to the addition of gravel, plants, or paths. And the manual emphasizes that appropriate rock shapes must be used. It describes how those rocks must visually overlap to create depth and a grand visual scenery.

[00:13:28]The rocks are often organized in triads and then you know symbolism is laid upon them or draw drawn from them. Uh there could be horizontal, diagonal and vertical lines. Earth, man, and heaven represented um near, middle, and far distance. Or perhaps religious symbolism such as Buddha and his two attendants.

[00:13:49]And all the rocks get names. Zoen really liked to name his rocks. Um this one paragraph reads, "The most important is the never- aging rock. The rock of 10,000 eons set alongside it. The master rock looks after its attendant rocks.

[00:14:03]The attendant rocks look up to the master. The attendant rock and the two respect and affection stones in proportional relationship of larger to smaller follow the model of the first two. And it goes on and on like this naming many many different kinds of rocks and their significance and power at Saiji which is a very famous temple.

[00:14:24]It's known as the moss temple for u many people visit its its lower garden. But there's this upper dry garden which is open very rarely and there we see the earliest development of what's called kadesansui which is the dry mountain and water landscape style and in general the kadesui garden uh in it rocks are placed as if there was water or in places where there should be water. So flat topped rocks could suggest a waterfall and white sand could be used to represent water itself. And this specific garden marks the beginning of a preference for horizontal lines in Japanese stone compositions. Um making stone groupings the main compositional element of a garden. And we see a transition from these pleasure gardens of the high-end period to a deeply spiritual environment and meditative mood of the Zen temple.

[00:15:22]And in the west, these gardens are sometimes referred to as Zen gardens.

[00:15:27]But not all Zen temples have a dry landscape garden. And not all dry landscape gardens really have any relationship to the Zen school of Buddhism. So it's an important distinction.

[00:15:40]At Tenryji we see a garden that features a large pond backed by mountains which is a very very early example of shake which is borrowed scenery. This is a ancient Eastern Asian design technique that incorporates a distant view into the composition itself. And you can clearly see the inspiration drawn from those early Chinese landscape paintings with the mountains in the background and the rocks in the water and in their overlapping arrangements give this immense depth of scenery. This garden also featured a a revolutionary feature at the time, a dry stone cascade in the back left which really never had water running through it. It was the sort of insinuation of a waterfall. And there are many creative vertical rock arrangements throughout the garden. And the rocks in the water and all of the overlapping verticality, they really give this depth depth to the scenery.

[00:16:39]Sort of the more you look at it and the more the borrowed scenery fades away.

[00:16:44]You start to get drawn into this miniature rugged landscape which kind of seems to grow in immensity the deeper you fall into it.

[00:16:54]The man behind the two previous gardens is Muso Kokushi and he was a Zen Buddhist monk and garden designer of this time and his gardens and his influence are in gardens sort of contain an increasing abstraction of natural scenery. So we see the movement away again from these pleasure palace gardens towards a very monastic and contemplative framing of the of the natural world.

[00:17:23]The most famous example of this contemplative framing is Ryuanji.

[00:17:31]At Ryuanji, we see representation moving towards total abstraction. Right? It features these 14 stones that are held in this balanced tension in an otherwise completely empty field of raed gravel.

[00:17:46]There's always one rock hidden from view, no matter where you sit. And the composition is grasped intuitively. It's not really able to be analyzed logically. And this enigmatic quality is sort of its fundamental experience. You know, what does this mean? What does it mean? And it's kadesansu in its purest form.

[00:18:08]There's no definitive designer necessarily, though it's likely created by these riverbank workers, which were one of Japan's lowest classes. And they were because of their class uh selected to to garden and and create these gardens. And over the generations they became skilled and respected specialists themselves sort of rising in class um into a very respected body. And we know that they might have been associated with the design of this garden because their the initials of two of these gardeners was carved in the back of one of these stones. And Rayoan's meaning is also famously discussed, right? Um the raed gravel could speak of water in which case the rocks are islands or the gravel is time and in which case the rocks are spots of existence. And there was one scholar in 2010 who reviewed 130 separate papers that contained 340 different opinions about the meaning of this garden. Uh some said it was the story of a tigris bringing her cubs across a body of water but one of them was dangerous and couldn't be left with the others. Um another group saw a representation of the sea. Others saw representation of Buddhist arhats uh who have enched enlightenment and some also claimed this abstract numerical arrangement. But whatever the me meaning derived, the gardener asks the onlooker to sit and contemplate and transcend the mundane within.

[00:19:50]At Daisen in uh unlike Rayoanji which is a single scene, this garden represents a long landscape painting that surrounds the building and it forms this river that represents the course of human life. And in essence, the garden unites both painting and picture making with the building and the architecture. It's sort of everything all at once.

[00:20:15]And in the garden, we see a waterfall of white gravel spilling down between a series of rocks flowing under this small stone bridge and then fanning out into a wide river where we see a stone boat floating towards a vast ocean. And it encounters rocks of all different kinds.

[00:20:33]Some representing the crane and turtle islands, others representing difficulties one would encounter um and others symbolizing longevity.

[00:20:44]Finally, the river empties into this expanse of raked sand which symbolizes the ocean of oblivion and it's interrupted only by these two cones. And the garden itself is an allegory. It it displays human life and it ends with emptiness but offers so much depth and lessons along the way.

[00:21:08]There are other important figures in medieval Japanese garden art that we have to talk about. Um, Hideoshi on the left was one of the generals who united Japan and he was in an intermediary position between emperor and court and he reduced everybody's power and made them all dependent on him and he concentrated wealth and so lacking Zen training he indulged in that wealth in a very opulent lifestyle that included great garden art. And Senor Rikui on the right um gave a new dimension to refined rusticity. He was responsible for developing and refining the tea ceremony and its aesthetic experience. So Rikyu did train at Taito at Dku Gi in Zen Buddhism and he was appointed the tea master to Hideoshi and they had a famously tumultuous relationship. At the Sanmon gate uh at Dtoku Gi, there's an unusual second floor where Riku installed a statue of himself which was customary of a temple benefactor at the time. And this outraged Hideoshi who when he would come to this temple to study tea with Zenoriku, he would have to pass beneath the gate which meant that symbolically Rikyu was superior to him. And so in 1591, Hideoshi vengefully ordered Rickyu to commit ritual suicide.

[00:22:40]But the tea ceremony required this enactment of precise movements. It required a particular kind of setting and elegant simple utensils. And it was conducted itself in this small humble hut where guests were forced to stoop to enter into this dark confined room that didn't even look out onto the garden.

[00:23:03]Instead, there would be a small al cove that displayed a fine scroll or a flower arrangement that you would contemplate and the tea was prepared and consumed ceremoniously.

[00:23:15]The whole ceremony would separate the participant from the outside world and offered entry into this other realm through these humbling rituals. And this gave rise to the roi or the dewy path, the tea garden itself. And the tea garden combined a series of spaces that were arranged for the purposes of the tea ceremony. They offered a feeling of nature within the confines of the city and made references to real rural landscapes.

[00:23:46]In the words of Riku, the Roji was a path out of the ordinary fleeing world.

[00:23:51]It was a place in which to rid oneself of all those things that troubled the mind.

[00:23:58]The tea garden featured recognizable symbols that were repurposed for the ceremony. So we see the stone lantern appropriated from the Buddhist temple to illuminate paths within the garden. We also see a handwashing bowl which would have been drawn from the Shinto um shrines. They were used to sort of purify you ritualistically before you entered the shrine space. But in the tea garden, one would use the handwashing bowl to sort of ritualistically purify themselves before the tea ceremony. And these objects became admired and aestheticized in their own right. They were designed for a manner different from their temple prototypes. Also important in the tea garden is these stepping stones which would play a very important role in the development of paths in later stroll gardens. You know the visitor would move very slowly and methodically on these stepping stones through the tea garden accentuating sort of the process of that experience.

[00:24:58]basically the whole garden and all of its elements would come together to create this like processional experience, right? And this was an important development in Japanese gardens that the garden itself was an experience.

[00:25:14]At the same time, we see the development of show style architecture and art with buildings that are designed to view the gardens from within from a seated position. And here we will see the establishment of architectural norms that are kind of associated with traditional Japanese structures to this day such as sliding doors and partition screens and these floors covered with tatami mats. And these reception rooms would be used to host visitors of all kinds. Um and then you would look at the garden sort of as a painting outdoors.

[00:25:49]And the garden of this particular palace um it served as a living painting that you would look at and different reception rooms would be used for different kinds of people. So the rocks of this garden are perceived very differently depending on the direction the garden is viewed. So I want you to look specifically in the center. There's a big triangular rock right in the center of the pond. And this reception room would have been used for um visiting dignitaries, maybe competing warlords, um political adversaries, people that needed to be impressed or intimidated. But from the next reception room, which would have been used for family or allies or closer people, you see in the center that same rock is showing a much different side of itself.

[00:26:42]And in fact, the whole garden itself is much softer and rounder and more intimate actually in appearance than the sort of imposing verticality of the other reception room. And so these paintings, these garden paintings would be used in the different reception rooms in different ways. And that's an important distinction of the show in style.

[00:27:11]At Sanbo Inn, um we encounter a show in masterpiece which was directed by Hideoshi. And the garden is influenced heavily by the tea ceremony and sort of laid upon that show style reception room viewing. Um and it offers this processional experience as you move through these different buildings. They offer a journey through these different reception rooms where visitors of elevating esteem and importance would process deeper into the garden. And you see here in the entrance there's this imperial grandeur with the white gravel and the doors that have crosanthemum and palonia emlazed upon them. Those are two symbols of the imperial family and they would only be opened when the imperial family visited. So, this is a very grand reception area that conjures that imperial glory. And as you move into the first garden room, we see these 800 rocks arranged in this incredibly dynamic uh composition.

[00:28:14]Hideoshi would host big cherry blossom viewing parties here. Um, and the sculpted pine on that center island is apparently over 600 years old.

[00:28:26]There's a large waterfall in the back of this garden and one of the most coveted named stones in Japanese history on the right, the Fujito stone. And according to legend, this stone cost Hideoshi 5,000 bushels of rice to acquire. So this whole garden is very much a display of Hideoshi's power through all of its different ornamental elements.

[00:28:50]But as you move into the final spaces of this structure, you see the an intimate scene that offers much more simplicity and humility. There's a dry stone garden in the back which leads to a rustic tea house. And one could assume that perhaps these spaces were reserved for the most trusted and esteemed visitors who were worthy of the intimate simplicity and humility that Hideoshi offered.

[00:29:20]There's a major transition that occurs in Japan's history when Tokugawa takes control of the government and moves the power from Kyoto to Edeto or Tokyo. and the emperor and the court become essentially custodians of Japanese aesthetics and not much more as the powerful shoguns expelled Christian missionaries and foreign traders and systematically controlled every aspect of Japanese life through their feudal lords the daimo and Kobori Enshu on the right was a tea master disciple of Senor Rikyu and a garden designer and his garden design philosophy into the Edeto period hearkens back to that high-end glory of of the classical era and combines it with this rustic simplicity of Senor Riku's tea garden aesthetics and we can see his influence primarily on the two villas Katsura and Shugakuin in Kyoto at the Katsura villa the heirs of Hideoshi sort of developed this country retreat on the western side of Kyoto on the banks of the Katsura River. And so there they were completely removed from power and they just devoted themselves to aesthetics and they really achieved the full glory of this era's garden aesthetics. The garden contains a largecale route laid out for the purposes of strolling. And so along that route, one would encounter a sequence of scenic surprises uh and a large variety of tea houses.

[00:31:01]The pads themselves employed a variety of different pavement treatments and they traversed mounds, beaches, bridges and encountered many stone lanterns and wash basins along the way. And the aim essentially was to provide scenery that changed with every step. There were some dead ends, there were some hidden aloves. The experience of moving along the dynamic path is very disorienting and very exciting and sort of builds on that processional experiential element of the tea garden in this grand way.

[00:31:35]At Shugakuin, we see more hideand reveal tactics. Right? So there the visitor is processing through these tight hedges and pruned pines constantly gaining elevation as they move through the property. And finally, this massive expansive view and lake is revealed. And it's this breathtaking use of borrowed scenery um very much like as far as the eye can see uh is is incorporated into this massive scene.

[00:32:06]The viewers then led around the lake through a series of scenic follys and the daimo or the feudal lords followed this uh example and created their own gardens always competing with each other to make the best and most beautiful garden. So these gardens were used for holding banquetss and other enjoyments and they were places of grand leisure and great power display.

[00:32:39]They combined strolling and picture framing with leisurely winding paths that reveal a constant and fluid succession of scenic views and usually encountered in an important sequence.

[00:32:55]They often featured a central pond with artificial hills surrounding it, and they were filled with representations of real life places or idealized scenes of nature, including mountain landscapes or pebble beaches.

[00:33:16]Sometimes the gardens would tell a story, perhaps the daimo's life or the travels that they went on, or it displayed special places that were important to them. At RKUN in Tokyo, the garden recreated 88 different scenes drawn from poetry.

[00:33:38]And while religious and spiritual imagery were used, the shrines and the stone lanterns became more and more secularized to the point of pure aesthetic. And I bring up the middle lantern in this slide is nearly 20 ft tall and it's at that point just totally out of scale with the uh temple origins of these lanterns. It it is a display of power at this point and aesthetic superiority.

[00:34:07]I also became obsessed with these crooked bridges while I was visiting these gardens. Um, they were so confounding. They slowed you down immensely.

[00:34:17]Uh, imagining traversing them in some kind of formal wear as a Japanese uh sort of aristocrat uh seemed frankly dangerous to me and they forced this contemplation. you really had to pay attention to how you were moving through the space and what view was being presented to you as you were led maybe to a dead end or a sharp turn. Um, they gave you different ways to look at the garden and slow you down and sort of confound your footsteps.

[00:34:49]And in all ways through these gardens, the superiority and the power of the shogun and the feudal lord is reinforced. So many of the daimo gardens used that technique of borrowed scenery to incorporate the castle into the garden composition. So you were constantly reminded of who was in power and how close their power was to you.

[00:35:14]However, by the 18th century, garden art was becoming very formulaic in all of these gardens. And in contrast to the spiritual and aesthetic impulses of before, we see large rocks and ornamental lanterns able to be purchased and arranged for for a new wealthy merchant class that began to want and have their own gardens. So garden making thus became simplified, right? It was reduced from this singular fine art creation to an industry of models and standards, something that you could purchase.

[00:35:56]With the opening of the country in the Maji period, the Shogun's power diminished and brought an end to the feudal system. So the samurai class and the daimo houses collapsed and many of their gardens were ruined or lost. Even some temple gardens were lost in the drive against Buddhism. And there was this great westernization of culture and garden art as Japan's leaders were striving to adopt Western values and practices. Kajiro Ozawa, a garden educator of the time, documented the gardens of that era. And of one such western garden, western style garden in Japan, he wrote, "This garden, completely imitating the western style, presents a mingled spectacle of flower beds and groups of trees. There are no stepping stones as you would find in even the most common of courtyards, nor even a little garden mound. Grass fields in round and oval shapes are laid down, and you can walk around these. No interesting rock arrangements. In my perception, it is completely unsatisfactory and boring. But this is simply very western and if it should be praised as such, it should be praised.

[00:37:11]Hi Ogawa aka Uji entered the scene and the upper class villas in Kyoto provided a stage for his work. He developed an understanding of the standards of refined elegance um those traditional standards that were demanded and expected from the Japanese elite while also attempting to unite those with western design influences.

[00:37:38]And his most celebrated work was Murin An which is set against the backdrop of Mount Higashiyama. So in at Murinan we see wild flowers encouraged to bloom in this coarse long grass and low boulder arrangements line a babbling stream which is reminiscent of mountain scenery and the stream flattens out into a wide shallow pool. This was scenery previously unseen in Japanese gardens.

[00:38:06]And together with expansive lawns and intimate tea houses and their surrounding gardens, they create one harmonious and relatively compact creation. The garden itself united these western influences with the Japanese traditions.

[00:38:23]At Tadu Sanso, we see more of Amuji's combinations of western ideas and historic traditions and heavily using stones and water. My favorite feature of this garden uh is this waterfell which is uh in the frame sort of in the back right that you can see from this viewing room. And it's accentuated by the sounds of a waterfall that are hidden just below the room itself. And so while you're listening, while you're viewing this scene, you're surrounded by the sounds of the waterfall. And it really pulls you in. Even though the waterfall is far away, it feels like you're inside this garden scene looking at it from afar. And throughout this garden, I felt this general westernness of the use of plants and composition. And it also still felt distinctly Japanese. um his gardens were highly praised and highly emulated and he represented this new garden style. He was essentially a pioneer of the modern garden in Kyoto.

[00:39:33]But the modern pioneer that I've become the most intrigued by is Mir Amire Shigamorei. So throughout Shigamorei's career, he persistently questioned traditional norms. He believed that Japanese garden design had essentially stopped evolving since the Edeto period and he theorized that gardens were merely copying the existing famous gardens and well-known landscapes. His philosophical approach to Japanese garden design incorporated those modern western influences and he wished to sort of breathe a new vitality into the traditional medium.

[00:40:14]Shigamorei regarded the Japanese garden art as a unique cultural achievement of the highest order. And he introduced new materials like concrete and used them in novel ways. He formed winding lines. He used color creatively. And he introduced many new garden design concepts into traditional contexts.

[00:40:38]In 1971, he wrote an essay titled The New Sakuti. And in it he wrote one can make gardens according to the ancient meanings or according to the ancient forms but in actuality the person who is designing the garden and building it is from nowhere other than the present day.

[00:40:56]The fact that we are people who live in the present means that we are unable to make gardens that carry the meanings of olden times or have the forms of those times. If we try, we can only make a garden that is an imitation and this is meaningless.

[00:41:14]The hojo garden at Ty Tyuku Gi was his first commission and a very early masterpiece. When the head priest contacted him to create this garden um around the Hojo, Shigamorei said that he would go along and he would do this, but once he created his design, they could make no changes to it. And the priest said he would be okay with that. But he reminded him that according to beliefs, he had to nothing could go to waste on the temple site and Shigamorei had to reuse all of the existing materials, including a pile of paving stones that were around the complex. And Shigamorei obliged to this requirement and set out on this design.

[00:42:02]So, as you first walk into this garden, you encounter on the left uh these reused pillars from the original temple foundations. And they're arranged in the form of Ursa Major or the Big Dipper.

[00:42:14]And this shape resembles the dipper used at Japanese water basins. And it implies that the garden itself is a form of purification for the visitor. And on the western side of the hojo, we see these sineuous curves and these clipped aelia cubes that add quite a modern flare to these very traditional materials.

[00:42:37]In the back in the north garden, he shocked the garden establishment. He used those recycled pavers and sunk them directly in the ground in a formal grid pattern that slowly breaks and drifts off into a background of aelas and maples. And this garden has since become synonymous with contemporary Japanese garden design. And in essence, it helped at that time to liberate the Japanese garden from from its long and stuck traditions.

[00:43:08]And in the spirit of breaking garden norms and celebrating tradition through a very different lens and presentation, the Adachi Museum in Matsuer offers a very unique garden experience. So the museum presents the garden to the viewer like a landscape painting hung in a museum gallery. You cannot walk into this garden. You can only view it through windows and isolated viewpoints.

[00:43:34]And it's not a processional stroll garden. Yet it's connected to the traditions and the vernacular of one. We see stone bridges, lanterns, and tea houses and so on.

[00:43:46]And we see idealized visions of the natural world. Here there's Japanese pines on the beach and in the distance a waterfall. The museum elevates the Japanese garden to a curated art form worthy of display alongside those same landscape paintings that we looked at earlier and other fine objects throughout the museum. This garden has been celebrated as one of the finest contemporary Japanese gardens for the last few decades and it felt like a mandatory capstone pilgrimage for my trip.

[00:44:21]So, you're now ready to wander the country of Japan, eating your way and looking at many different gardens. And you know, with all that history in my brain and my eyes trained to see things, I wandered around and and I started to question, you know, what things stuck with me and what responses would come up as I visited these gardens and learned more about the country and its people through uh their garden design.

[00:44:52]And I really think it all comes back to the rocks. Um, I loved this contemporary garden design in Ohara, just outside Kyoto. I was struck by the sense of playfulness, some of the like the rulebreaking I saw in this garden, and yet the commitment to tradition. Uh, there are rocks arranged in triads, there are stone boats, there are miniature Mount Fuji all alongside and through these creative and contemporary stone formations.

[00:45:25]I couldn't get over the diversity of paths that I encountered around the gardens, the cut and the uncut stones, the diversity of path treatments, and many, many diverse paths even within the same garden, switching from one to another and back.

[00:45:44]I also loved the paths that forced you to slow down, to contemplate, to breathe, and to look at the garden from new angles. And I love the sense that there were rules and there was order.

[00:45:57]And yet those rules and that order could sometimes be broken, but only with great consideration and attention to detail.

[00:46:05]It's important to note that that middle picture is a path laid over 300 years ago and it's remarkably modern in appearance and yet it is incredibly old.

[00:46:21]I was blown away by our visit to this seventh generation stone carver workshop where all of these stone lanterns and wash basins are carved by hand with simple hammers and chisels.

[00:46:35]The stoneard felt like a Hayomiaki movie of spirit houses like up into the hills climbing up into the forest.

[00:46:46]And as someone with a very complicated relationship to running bamboo, the bamboo really stole my heart, especially the one on the right, this tortoise shell bamboo, which had such a beautiful pattern along its stems.

[00:47:02]I was inspired by the diversity of bamboo fence styles and designs um and the legacy of traditional crafts associated with their construction.

[00:47:11]There were so many many different kinds of bamboo fences and you could tell that there was a deep history and symbolism and craft behind each of them.

[00:47:23]I loved how the bamboo was used to construct simple doors and walls and organize garden spaces. These walls enhanced privacy, but they also provided intrigue and mystery to the garden spaces as you moved through them. And all of this was accomplished with a very recognizable and very neutral material.

[00:47:43]Bamboo seemed to be the most important building element throughout all of the gardens.

[00:47:49]And of course, no gardener was without their bamboo broom, which was used for sweeping, tidying, cleaning up footsteps and other debris. And the bamboo made for this very simple, elegant, and practical tool that no gardener was without.

[00:48:06]I worked briefly with a small Tokyo garden design and install crew, learning about their dedication to traditional crafts. The head gardener explained to me that his desire was to create work that looked like it was old. He wanted his garden designs and his installations to blend into the traditional Japanese cultural scenery. and his ethos reminded me a lot of lessons I learned as a young gardener um to keep a delicate and sensitive hand in the garden. Um you sort of want to garden so that the labor itself disappears entirely and I loved finding that commonality with his crew.

[00:48:50]I spent time with the UAako uh gardening firm in Kyoto and their practices grounded in traditional sensibilities and craft while still opening themselves to modern maintenance standards and novel techniques.

[00:49:06]For example, they have to prune and manage a lot of overgrowth and viewsheds of these historic landscapes and they need to respond to changing conditions whether they be environmental or ownership related and owner intention.

[00:49:19]and I was inspired by their sensitive restoration and reimagining of historic garden spaces. It reminded me a lot of our work restoring and reinterpreting Unterme.

[00:49:32]I was able to witness over the course of October the monumental task of pine pruning across the country. And this horicultural moment is an elaborate and precise process of sculpture by removal.

[00:49:47]So all of the downward and inward and upward-facing needles are removed completely and any new growth that's left behind is severely shortened. So a lot of light and air is let into the center of the tree and the gardens create all variety of shapes. um they are kind of holding their trees in a sort of like structural stasis for decades and centuries and it was really stunning work to witness um throughout all the gardens I visited.

[00:50:20]There were these remarkable large scale pruning designs at the Imperial Palace and many different shapes and styles.

[00:50:28]Um, one of my favorites especially was the Zen Temple style, which was similar to a bottle brush, sort of this thin column.

[00:50:38]I was completely blown away at Ritsurin and Takamatsu by over the 1,000 shaped pines of this garden. Um there the garden garden garden gardeners maintain these really incredible geometric boxike shapes and forms which have been continuously maintained some of them for over 300 years there. I also loved this massive crane perched on the back of this turtle-shaped rock.

[00:51:10]I also saw the elaborate rigging of these pine branches in Knazawa, which is known for for its snowfall. And though I didn't see the finished product, it was fascinating to see all of the rigging being put in place.

[00:51:24]Got this photo from the internet to sort of demonstrate how much care and attention is is paid to not allow these pines to break under the weight of winter snow.

[00:51:37]I was really enamored, honestly, with Japan's care and devotion to trees. Um, specifically the structural supports that they use. They help encourage these unusual and unique tree shapes which are almost suspended in air. Um, I thought to myself, that branch would have been cut down in a different park in New York City, but here they put a support underneath it and allowed you to walk underneath it or around it or let it be cantalvered out over some water.

[00:52:09]I was really moved by their devotion to old trees. Just looking at each of these trees and imagining the story that they told or their importance to their community, there clearly was a community of care surrounding many of these trees.

[00:52:25]They were being supported. They were being tended to. And I think this care for old trees says a lot about Japan and its priorities. It was very legible in the landscape.

[00:52:38]I saw treasure boats and clouds and fancible shapes of all kinds.

[00:52:44]And there was a general whimsy and sort of shapliness everywhere I looked. The Japanese love topiary.

[00:52:53]So many different shapes and clipped designs.

[00:52:58]I admired the small delicate details like this simple and and del dedicated adornment of this corner with this aelia shrub. Um I loved the way they sort of softened the edges of human life with plants.

[00:53:17]Even the home gardeners got in on topiary action. Some of the best gardens I encountered in the country were on my walks through the neighborhoods in between temples.

[00:53:30]And like in the UK, you can sense that gardening is like in the DNA of Japanese people. Their front yards contain these cohesive, fully realized designs. And I saw many white-haired women on ladders with topiary shears. So they are definitely involved.

[00:53:50]And in the city center, everyone has potted plants outside their front door, which soften and even enhance the city architecture.

[00:54:00]There was no doorstep without one. And I especially loved the ones that had vines and small trees that almost created these false garden beds made entirely out of pots.

[00:54:13]I hope you noticed also the lack of flowers in this talk, right? So, one of my favorite questions that undermire visitors will ask me is where are the flowers?

[00:54:23]And no matter the season, and I think the lesson here is that sometimes there are no or very few flowers. And I think the Japanese garden can help us learn to pay attention to other things because these scenes are just as engaging, if not more so, without the distraction or the attention to flowers. And that's not to say that the Japanese ignore flowers, but they instead revere each bloom when it is the appropriate time for that bloom. They present scenes that aren't necessarily devoted to the flowers within them.

[00:54:58]As I perceived it, they honor a complete flower calendar according to their favorite blossoms. And this year will begin now. Um, I'm recording this in February, the Lunar New Year with Prunis Mume. And it will continue through a parade of traditional flowers, plum, peach, cherry, wisteria, iris, peony, lotus, hibiscus, chrysanthemums, the fall foliage of maples, and chameleia.

[00:55:28]In the wintertime, the Japanese seem particularly attuned to the phenology of their surroundings. when things are coming into bloom, emerging, scessing and dying back. And these phases are observed and celebrated with the many, many festivals and rituals in Japan.

[00:55:50]And you know, I only visited in October of last year and I only saw that moment, but the loudest plant and harbinger of the of the moment was this narini. And it represents the finale of summer and the beginning of autumn. I loved how it became a ditched along the edges of farms like lipstick across the landscape.

[00:56:11]And there of course were other ephemeral blooms of the season. Euptorium and hibiscus and crepe myrtles. In particular, I loved the beonia grandis sort of screaming its head off whenever you encountered it.

[00:56:25]I absolutely loved this mscanthus in a box. For anyone who's ever tried to dig or divide Mscanthus, this is exactly where Mscanthus belongs.

[00:56:37]I noticed these lotus seed heads, which was evidence of a floral scene that I had just missed, and the wisteria overgrown from the summer, which was waiting for its pruning.

[00:56:51]And there of course were promises of seasons to come like these clipped aelas imagining all of these buttons and meatballs covered in pink flowers.

[00:57:01]And while the Japanese maples when they were lit from above illuminated the ground in this like acidic greenish yellow, from above you could see the hint of red and the electric show of brilliance that was coming soon.

[00:57:19]And of course throughout the year is moss. What is the Japanese garden without moss?

[00:57:28]100 plus species of mosses throughout these gardens are spontaneous. They grow with abandon in the humid Japanese climate.

[00:57:39]And of course the impeccable maintenance of that moss and the gardens in general is due to the highly skilled Japanese gardener. I was really moved by their dedication, their labor, their devotion to craft, aesthetics, and tradition.

[00:57:55]And I was reminded of our shared values.

[00:58:00]And when I contemplate these gardeners and their influence on me, you know, I'm struck by their use and manipulation over centuries of a very cohesive native Japanese vernacular design theory. And I think like the ancient text of the sakuti advised, the Japanese gardeners have always looked towards nature for their inspiration. Everything it seems is local.

[00:58:26]The scenery itself makes specific reference to an idealized architecture of the natural world of Japan.

[00:58:36]The gravel that they use in their gardens is harvested directly from the Shirakawa River that flows through the city. And the traditional building styles incorporate dried plants, mud, bamboo, and all sorts of other local materials.

[00:58:53]The trees, the shrubs, the forbes, the grasses, and the moss are all part of the island and East Asian ecology, and they're most comfortable in this unique Japanese climate.

[00:59:06]And there will always be a Mount Fuji somewhere in the garden.

[00:59:12]It's compelling to look at these creations and wish to replicate them or to pluck something from their composition to use in our own gardens.

[00:59:20]And I think we can expect cultural exchange with the Japanese and have much to learn from each other. However, I love this quote from James C. Rose who was a 20th century modernist landscape architect. He was a member of the revolutionary Harvard 3 and he wrote in the 1960s, "A Japanese garden is a garden made in Japan. There's no such thing as a garden where its people aren't." That's a translation, not a garden. Of course, you can have a real Japanese garden. All you have to do is be Japanese, but you wouldn't like that.

[00:59:56]I'm drawn back to my own foundations in restoration, ecology, and my innate curiosity for the local natural world I am surrounded by.

[01:00:06]I think of the references I have close by, the plants, materials, and natural architecture of Eastern North America.

[01:00:14]Our own beaches and mountains are inspiring and ecologically brilliant. We have much to honor and draw from in our own backyard. However, I don't wish to dismiss good design in this.

[01:00:29]We should absolutely be making more topiaries and structurally grounding our garden designs with shape and geometry.

[01:00:38]We should try to organize our spaces in compelling and surprising ways. ideally using materials harvested or fabricated from our own local surroundings.

[01:00:50]And we can use exotic flora responsibly to enhance and beautify our garden pictures.

[01:01:00]The traditional Japanese garden has singular and defining features that are born from this devotion to place.

[01:01:08]They revere the power, symbolism, and spirits of nature through their design.

[01:01:14]And there's so much care and attention to detail in their gardens. And I'm motivated to look even closer at the natural world around me to see how I might use elements of our own ecology to construct a pleasing and ideal version of nature that celebrates and respects our own landscape. How can we make pleasing pictures and inspiring scenes with our own local vernacular? It seems like North American horiculture is obsessed with this question at the moment and I think the Japanese may have some time-t tested lessons for us in that process of rediscovery.

[01:01:50]I'm also reminded of the process of creating the ruin and rodendron gardens at Untermire where we wanted to recall Unterm's famed Roodendron collection while interpreting decades of neglect at this site.

[01:02:05]We drew some inspiration from hikes I had taken around abandoned estates in the Hudson Valley and found a way to bring that local natural historic character into this ruined monumental setting.

[01:02:22]or this scene from Siconic Garden using pruned native blueberries carpeted with moss underneath to evoke that quintessential traditional Japanese aesthetic with a very commonly occurring native plant.

[01:02:38]Even Samuel Untermire, like a Japanese daimo, asked for a reference from his travels to Europe to be exacted in his garden. And his designer Bosworth remarkably used the view of the Palisad Cliffs in New Jersey to help recreate that exotic vista from Italy. All of these examples, I think, use that reverence for a unique spirit of place as the basis for good garden design like I saw the Japanese use.

[01:03:06]And we hope to bring all of these sensibilities to the table when we develop and create a new pond garden below the foundation of the Undermire Mansion. I'm confident that this trip will inform how we approach this space and all of our spaces in the years to come. So, please stay tuned.

[01:03:27]Thank you very much.