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![]() ![]() The Japanese tradition has long been to keep a well-designed garden as near as possible to its original condition, and many famous gardens appear to have changed little over several centuries, apart from the inevitable turnover of plants, in a way that is extremely rare in the West. Most modern Japanese homes have little space for a garden, though the tsubo-niwa style of tiny gardens in passages and other spaces, as well as bonsai (in Japan always grown outside) and houseplants mitigates this, and domestic garden tourism is very important. Specialized styles, often small sections in a larger garden, include the moss garden, the dry garden with gravel and rocks, associated with Zen Buddhism, the roji or teahouse garden, designed to be seen only from a short pathway, and the tsubo-niwa, a very small urban garden. Later large gardens are often in the kaiyū-shiki-teien, or promenade garden style, designed to be seen from a path circulating around the garden, with fixed stopping points for viewing. No original examples of these survive, but they were replaced by the "paradise garden" associated with Pure Land Buddhism, with a Buddha shrine on an island in the lake. These were designed to be seen from small boats on the central lake. Some of the most significant different traditional styles of Japanese garden are the chisen-shoyū-teien ("lake-spring-boat excursion garden"), which was imported from China during the Heian period (794–1185). A characteristic of Japanese gardens is that they are designed to be seen from specific points. Japanese literature on gardening goes back almost a thousand years, and several different styles of garden have developed, some with religious or philosophical implications. Though a natural-seeming appearance is the aim, Japanese gardeners often shape their plants, including trees, with great rigour.Īn island in Kōraku-en gardens, Okayama, with azaleas in flower. ![]() Evergreen plants are "the bones of the garden" in Japan. Despite there being many attractive Japanese flowering plants, herbaceous flowers generally play much less of a role in Japanese gardens than in the West, though seasonally flowering shrubs and trees are important, all the more dramatic because of the contrast with the usual predominant green. : 6 Water is an important feature of many gardens, as are rocks and often gravel. : 6 Ancient Japanese art inspired past garden designers. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden designers to suggest a natural landscape, and to express the fragility of existence as well as time's unstoppable advance. Japanese gardens ( 日本庭園, nihon teien) are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. The moss garden at the Saihō-ji temple in Kyoto, started in 1339. ![]()
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