A Japanese Touch for Your Garden

Here is a concise introduction to the practical aspects of making a Japanese garden. Whether your garden is a spacious suburban lot, an office countyard, or a tiny inner-city backyard, you will find here hundreds of creative but time-honored ways to make maximum use of the space you have.

You will learn how to lay stones and pathways and how to create intriguing sand patterns like the ones in Zen temple gardens. You will learn about Japanese lanterns, miniature pagodas, water basins, gates, and walls, and will be shown step by step how to make a bamboo lattice fence. Notes on the care of bamboo, moss, and grass are provided as are names of native North American plants and trees that can be substituted for conventional Japanese varieties. Schematic layout plans, detailed how-to explanations, and over 130 color photographs of Japanese gardens old and new give you ideas for endless variations.

Thoroughly up-to-date in its approach and based on the principle that a garden must satisfy the gardener, not a set of inflexible guidelines, this book encourages you to choose freely from the wide range of traditional Japanese design elements that suit your needs and tastes. Whether you live in the country, city, or somewhere in between, you will discover here numerous ways to transform--simply, inexpensively, and with your own two hands--that back porch, corridor, or yard into an intimate, tranquil oasis, one that will reward your planning and work with a rich and everchanging beauty.

Kiyoshi Selke was born in Kyoto in 1918 and holds degrees from the Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. One of postwar Japan's most original and thoughtful residential designers, he was with Masanobu Kudo a chief editor of Sakutei no Jiten (Encyclopedia of Garden Making). He is currently professor emeritus at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Masanobu Kudo was born in Tokyo in 1924 and holds a degree in East Asian history from Kyoto University. He helped found the avant-garde Ohara school of flower arranging and in 1969 became the director of the Japan Ikebana Arts Association. An acknowledged expert on flowers, trees, and plants, he has contributed to numerous publications on flower arranging and Japanese gardens.

David H. Engel, who served as editorial consultant for this volume, is a prominent American landscape architect and site planner. For several years in the 1950s, he studied in Japan under Tansai Sano, the late master landscape architect of Kyoto. Now in practice with an office in New York City, Mr. Engel does both private residential and large scale commercial and public work. His designs include Heian pavilions for the headquarters of the Gulf States Paper Corporation and the Japanese garden on the Rockefeller estate, acknowledged to be the finest in the Western world. A contributor to House Beautiful and The New Yorker, Mr. Engel is also the author of Japanese Gardens for Today and a forthcoming work, China's Gardens: Ancient Roots...Modern Lessons.

This book makes it possible for anyone to bring a touch of Oriental magic into his or her own back yard. The basic components of a Japanese garden and their functions are explained and illustrated in full color: stepping stones, statues, waterfalls, ponds, bamboo fences and gates, and more. 130 full-color photos.