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The
owner wanted color in this garden, flowers. I wanted the rocks to be
the focus. His wife agreed. “Could a garden be an area with no
plants, but an arrangement of natural materials such as stones, rocks
and timber?”
All
too I often think of the garden as that place where weed buckets lay
ever full and the pruning shears are always dull, and all that work
… but somehow I think the definition should always include the
place at the end of the day where you say “This is what I have,
this is what I have done!” A garden is about discovery and that
can include all forms of materials.
Were
I to move to the desert, I would be tempted to make a dry stream bed.
Not a Zen garden stream but one that would include all the wonderful
rocks they have done there. Not like the river beach rocks we have in
the Northwest but like the Bryce Canyon and all of those colors.
The
gardening would be in the translating of those colors and moving them
through that dry stream bed. Now, that would be a warm cozy garden for
me. Rocks, that are not stopping stones to look at, but rocks that
blend and flow and with every changing hour that bring new colors, new
shadows.
Rock
gardens do not need plants; but the lichen, the saxifrage and the moss
simply invite themselves to heat gathering sources. In California I had
to drive for hours to get to a high enough elevation to where plants
were minimalized, where there was enough wind and winter snow to render
trees into bonsai, growing stunted and picturesque. Here on the Olympic
Peninsula I can be in this zone in an hour or so. In Asian gardens, the
bonsai or Zen garden is often the most edited of gardens, every branch,
and every rock carefully placed or trained.
I submit, that nature, left
alone also edits, often very beautifully.
Centuries
ago Japanese gardens were influenced by the mainland (China and Korea),
but the special attention to stones in the garden came from Shinto
beliefs and the influence of Neolithic nature religions. The highly
stylistic Japanese Garden that we know today is much more related to
the influence of Buddhism, which came to Japan in 580.
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Jim’s
garden is situated on a slope, which drops west towards the Dungeness
River. It is a masculine setting with the powerful sound of a raging
river influencing all I attempt to do.
The
main colors are the green tones of the trees and the slate blue of the
river beneath. Light comes sparingly and fleetingly through the trees
in this dark canyon setting. There is coldness to this garden, brought
by the site itself and the temperature of this snow melt fed river.
Winter and spring at this elevation is very cold and this garden will
therefore be designed for being enjoyed in the warmer months of summer
and fall.
Our
winters are long and gray, so an attempt was made to provide for some
spring relief in the use of hardy bulbs and sturdy dogwoods. Plants
with tender blooms such as magnolia would be used only after careful
selection, and it was my intent that no primary color would ever
dominate. The various shades of green would be the main pages upon
which this landscape would float, colors such as red would arrive in
fall by means of the Katsura and the red weeping maple.
The
use of native plants or hybrids thereof were planned to be of white and
violet, for example, iris, bellflower, azalea. The exception being of
the Kousa dogwood, which has dominance for only a short time, and will
be tempered by the soft yellow of epemidium and white of hellebore.
I
am sure that by summer I will find some patches that do not work. Will
it be the Liriope leading to the bamboo? Only time will tell and a
garden only grows by its mistakes. No garden can ever be finished
– nor should it be. I only hope that this garden; be it entered
from the south, from the river or from the deck always engages the
visitors eye with thoughts both reflective of the inward garden as well
as expanding the consciousness to the world outside.
Will
this be a meditation garden? I hope so. The illumination gathered from
within this garden will not come from having used bright colors, but
from the commitment and placement of these rocks, and the care and
nurturing of the bonsai set within.
There
is ‘spirit’ alive in all things, rocks simply move at a
slower pace and to their eyes our quicksilver lives must register but
lightly, if at all.
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