Gardens: The gardens of Japan

Attlee says: "Japan's kare-sansui or dry gravel gardens are so famous that many people think they are the only kind of gardens in Japan. However, Japanese garden design also encompasses wonderful landscaped gardens built on a grand scale. Each period in Japan's history added its own, distinctive features to garden design." The key element of the Japanese garden, which has not changed through the centuries – is the high level of maintenance. Even in a landscape garden, which might cover ten or even 20 acres, everything is maintained to an extraordinarily high level.

Attlee begins her book with a description of Maruyama Park, in central Kyoto, one night in early April. It's Sakura, the cherry blossom festival, and the park is packed with thousands of locals and visitors. This festival is 1,500 years old, but as popular as ever, and Attlee says that this profoundly felt link with the natural world also draws the crowds into Japanese gardens where they find nature trained and brought to the peak of perfection.

"In Japan, every aspect of the garden environment is controlled. Over hundreds of years, Japanese gardeners have come to understand the essential characteristics of certain trees and plants, and they have learned to shape and control them in such a way that they seem to display those characteristics even more clearly," she says.

Attlee says that this art of pruning – known as niwake – appears in small, private gardens as well as the temple and "grand stroll" gardens featured in her book.

Gardens included range from public parks to royal palaces. "The different styles have different purposes," says Attlee. "The stroll gardens of the Edo era (1600-1868] were built for the entertainment of the feudal lords. Most of these gardens are now public parks. If you go there early in the morning you will see people doing tai-chi. During the rest of the day they are used in much the same way as a British park."

In contrast, the *kare-sansui, or dry gardens, were usually attached to temples. It's a common assumption that these gardens were used as a focus for meditation, but Attlee points out that the white gravel glares in the sun – not a suitable subject for sustained contemplation. Instead, monks make the maintenance of the garden part of their religious life.

"One of the great pleasures of visiting temple gardens is the sight of monks carefully raking the gravel into perfectly straight lines, and picking up each leaf as it falls," she says.

The most famous example of this type of garden is Ryoanji, a Zen garden without water, plants or trees, which is attached to a Buddhist temple in Kyoto. The ground is covered in pale, quartzite grit which is raked into perfect parallel lines that ripple as they encounter groups of rocks. The temple was built in 1450 by the general Hosokawa Katsumoto, and the garden is reputed to be the work of the artist Soami (c.1455-1525).

Attlee explains that for 200 years, Japan was cut off from the rest of the world, and this ensured a limited palette of plants in their gardens. The treaty that was eventually signed with the US in 1854 had a huge impact on garden design. "A very much broader spectrum of plants began to be used in the garden and the concept of the English lawn was introduced," she says.

"In a large stroll garden, you will find quite a variety of trees and plants. However, some species are particularly popular. Acers are used for their autumn colour, and cherries for their blossom. The pine is a vital element of the garden, and so are azaleas, which are clipped into wonderful, undulating forms."

One garden where clipped azaleas reach their potential is at the temple complex of Daichi-ji, founded in the eighth century. This gravel garden is filled with one of the most complex examples of azalea topiary (karikomi) in Japan. Here a vast number of azaleas have been pruned and combined to suggest the shape of a treasure ship. Another popular feature of many of the large stroll gardens in the book is to incorporate condensed versions of well-known Japanese landscapes, such as miniature versions of Mount Fuji.

Some gardens borrow from the surrounding landscape. Attlee says that at the temple of Entsu-ji, the abbot forbids professional photography in poor weather conditions. Why? Because without its view of distant Mount Hiei, "the garden is nothing".

Despite being spoiled for choice, Attlee says that she does have a favourite of the gardens: Kenroku-en – a 25-acre stroll garden in Kanazawa. "I particularly loved the beautifully pruned trees and the streams that wind through the garden. There are several very old trees at Kenroku-en. In an English garden they would have been felled, but at Kenroku-en the gardeners nurse them, using props and sacking bandages, and sometimes even filling their hollow trunks with concrete. The gardeners were focusing on pruning the pine trees when I was there. This happens every spring, and involves plucking out a certain proportion of the pine needles, so that the trees become semi-transparent."

Japanese gardening is very different from that in the UK. If you've been captivated by the clipped azaleas or tranquil nature of the raked gravel, is it worth trying to create your own Japanese garden at home? To this question Attlee gives an emphatic "No!". So, until such time as you can make a trip to Japan, her book is your window on Japan's greatest gardens.

The Gardens of Japan by Helena Attlee with photographs by Alex Ramsay, published by Frances Lincoln, priced 16.99, is out now.

For a host of exciting new plant products,visit www.van meuwen.com/scotsman

This Article was first published in The Scotsman on Saturday March 27, 2010