Product Description

This text is a guide to constructing and cultivating one's own Japanese garden. The book provides the basics behind each design and structure, revealing the significance behind elements such as fences, rocks, buildings, and ornaments, as well as suggestions on what plants to use.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #437801 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-31
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Often gardeners become so enslaved to maintenance and transformation that they neglect the meditative potential of their green space. Worrying over the details, the whole picture is sometimes lost. This is an attitude Herb Gustafson hopes to check in The Art of Japanese Gardens, a beautifully photographed book that creates in the reader a longing for total silence. Photographs of tranquil bridges, bright spidery Japanese maple leaves and shimmering ponds are accompanied by unpretentious philosophical asides such as: "Our gardens can become a profound representation of the universe as a whole," and: "We must pause to reflect on our journey thus far." Gustafson is not a stickler for historical detail, his notion of a "Japanese" garden is a hybrid of styles, some ancient, some modern. Chapters include "Boundaries," in which a variety of fences, walls, and gates are presented along with accessible descriptions of construction techniques. The third chapter explores that great dreamlike element of the traditional Japanese garden: the constant sound of running water, man-made streams where "we sit and are relaxed by the never-ending flow."

To truly carry out many of Gustafson's projects, the reader needs to be extremely handy, or planning on hiring a professional. It's also an ideal coffee-table book for the urban apartment dweller who needs to be reminded of peaceful spaces every once in a while, even when the "journey thus far" seems like a series of missed connections and splitting headaches. -–Emily White