new huntington chinese garden

On the way up to Los Ange­les we had a chance to make a quick stop at the Hunt­ing­ton Library, Art Col­lec­tion and Botan­i­cal Gar­dens in San Marino. Their Chi­nese gar­den, Liu Fang Yuan, the Gar­den of Flow­ing Fra­grance, opened to the pub­lic just last year. Fund-raising is ongo­ing for a sec­ond phase of con­struc­tion, and the plants that are there are still on the young side. Still, it’s not too early to take a look at what’s being billed as the largest gar­den of its kind out­side of China.

Two stone lions guard one of the alter­nate entrances into the garden.

Hand-carved stonework and elab­o­rate hard­scape details fig­ure promi­nently in the garden’s design. It’s worth tak­ing your time to appre­ci­ate the details close up.

This walk­way resolves to the adja­cent plant­ing in swoop­ing tiled edges.

Pat­terns made from peb­bles fixed in cement take sev­eral forms. Here’s one design.

…And a detail of another designs…

…And an overview of yet another of the pat­terns using pebbles.

These hard­scape details are dense and busy. Plant­i­ngs are also fairly dense, with many kinds of plants used in a small space. Move a few feet in any direc­tion and your view of the gar­den changes radically.

The over­all effect is kalei­do­scopic, and the gar­den encour­ages active engage­ment with the space.

Sev­eral struc­tures within the gar­den add even more to the lay­er­ing of space. This is the lotus pavilion.

Pavil­ion of the Three Friends (San You Ge)…

Ter­race of the Jade Mir­ror (Yu Jing Tai).

And sev­eral large taihu rocks–“scholar’s rocks”–enjoy places of honor around the gar­dens cen­tral pond.

Walk­ways curve, bend and buckle. There aren’t many direct ways to get from one place to another. Here’s the Cor­ri­dor of Water and Clouds, zig-zagging its way along one of the garden’s edges.

Even this bridge, the Bridge of the Joy of Fish, par­tic­i­pates in the garden-designer’s manip­u­la­tion of the viewer’s expe­ri­ence of the spaces.

So what did I think of all this? Over­all it’s a pretty spec­tac­u­lar gar­den. The hard­scape is inven­tive and beau­ti­fully done. I’m no expert on Chi­nese gar­dens, so I can’t tell you how well it rep­re­sents the con­cepts and expe­ri­ence of a true Chi­nese gar­den. But the Huntington’s press release makes it sound like they went through great pains to aim for accuracy:

Two firms based in China have worked with The Hunt­ing­ton to pro­vide authen­tic­ity to the project. The Suzhou Insti­tute of Land­scape Archi­tec­tural Design, devel­oped detailed con­struc­tion plans, work­ing from the ini­tial con­cep­tual draw­ings done by Jin Chen. Among the chal­lenges faced by the archi­tects was adapt­ing tra­di­tional Chi­nese struc­tures to meet U.S. reg­u­la­tions for seis­mic safety and wheel­chair acces­si­bil­ity. Fab­ri­ca­tion and con­struc­tion was pro­vided by the Suzhou Gar­den Devel­op­ment Co., Ltd. The firm sent 11 stone arti­sans to The Hunt­ing­ton in 2006 to install the hand-carved bridges and to place the stones around the lake. Another 50 wood carvers, roof tile experts, stone pavers, and other spe­cial­ists arrived in sum­mer 2007 to work on the struc­tures. Nearly all mate­ri­als except struc­tural steel and con­crete have come from China, includ­ing highly sculp­tural “scholar rocks.”

After mak­ing a cou­ple rounds through the gar­den, with my steps care­fully manip­u­lated by its designer, I’ll have to admit to feel­ing a lit­tle bit like a pup­pet. All gar­dens are manip­u­lated spaces, of course, and you’re given lim­ited ways to expe­ri­ence them. But in this gar­den I felt that out­side con­trol more strongly than in many other spaces.

Once the plants fill in more, I’m sure I’ll take more time, plan­ning my pac­ing and enjoy­ing the stops. Many of the garden’s plants have sym­bolic mean­ings. Learn­ing to appre­ci­ate the lay­ers of sub­tleties will take time.

The Huntington’s Chi­nese gar­den will become more reward­ing and inter­est­ing over the years, and I’ll look for­ward to vis­it­ing it in the future.


December 28 2009 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: • •

11 Responses to “new huntington chinese garden”

  1. Tatyana on 28 Dec 2009 at 10:10 am #

    Very inter­est­ing remark about feel­ing like a pup­pet! Never thought about that while vis­it­ing Chi­nese gar­dens. Should remem­ber this! Thank you for the great images and info!

  2. Elephant's Eye on 28 Dec 2009 at 11:13 am #

    At the Hamp­ton Court flower show this year, there was a peb­ble mosaic of bees. The tech­nique seems to start with the Chinese.

  3. Alice Joyce on 28 Dec 2009 at 11:59 am #

    James,
    This gar­den has been on my to-do list for post­ings ;D
    You did a lovely job of cap­tur­ing the beauty of the design ele­ments,
    and the background/history.
    I cer­tainly agree that a gar­den such as this needs time to mature in order for the plant­i­ngs to ‘catch up’ to and soften the hard­scape.
    It is quite set apart from the Clas­si­cal Chi­nese Schol­ars gar­dens in Van­cou­ver and Port­land. And Staten Island, too.
    Seattle’s Chi­nese Gar­den is a more of a strolling gar­den, but I believe fund­ing has been prob­lem­atic in terms of real­iz­ing their goals.

    The expan­sive land­scape of the Huntington’s Chi­nese gar­den cre­ates a unique set­ting in the U.S. One to be watched!
    Alice

  4. Susie on 28 Dec 2009 at 12:00 pm #

    I was going to wait & visit in the spring, but it sure looks beau­ti­ful in winter.

  5. tina on 28 Dec 2009 at 12:11 pm #

    It is a very lovely gar­den. I adore the stone used and one of these days I intend to actu­ally make a peb­ble mosaic so thanks for the pic­ture of the one there. I wish you a great New Year.

  6. ryan on 28 Dec 2009 at 11:38 pm #

    I’m always inter­ested in how Chi­nese and Japan­ese gar­dens use stone, this one def­i­nitely included. A lot of great details. But I know what you mean about con­trol and feel­ing like a pup­pet. I find myself study­ing these kinds of gar­dens, that that’s the level at which I engage with them.

  7. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » framing the garden view on 29 Dec 2009 at 6:31 am #

    […] Here are just a few more pho­tos left over from my post yes­ter­day on the Huntington’s recently-opened Chinese Garden. […]

  8. Town Mouse on 29 Dec 2009 at 9:56 am #

    Amaz­ing. I saw the Chi­nese Gar­den in Port­land, and was quite impressed, but this looks an order of mag­ni­tude more amaz­ing. Well, once I make that long-planned trip to South­ern CA, maybe I can visit that too.

    Great pho­tos btw.

  9. Helen on 29 Dec 2009 at 10:52 am #

    I think the use of peb­bles in the path is really inspirational

  10. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » the huntington’s japanese garden on 30 Dec 2009 at 6:34 am #

    […] vis­it­ing the dense and some­what fre­netic new Chi­nese Gar­den at the Hunt­ing­ton I was feel­ing like I needed to unwind a bit. For­tu­nately a short walk at the Hunt­ing­ton delivers […]

  11. lostlandscape on 01 Jan 2010 at 1:58 pm #

    Tatyana, I think it was all those jagged paths that pushed me over the edge to feel­ing manip­u­lated. I’ve felt the same way with some build­ings where there’s no log­i­cal quick access between two points.

    EE, the idea of a peb­ble mosaic could morph into all sorts of inter­est­ing direc­tions. I shold see if I can find some­thing on the Hamp­ton Court show.

    Alice, thank you for all your addi­tional infor­ma­tion. I look for­ward to your own post on this gar­den. So many gar­dens, so lit­tle time…

    Susie, I think spring­time would be the peak sea­son to expe­ri­ence the “flow­ing fra­grance” in the garden’s name. Have a good visit!

    Tina, a great New Year to you too! I know you like your gar­den projects–maybe there’ll be one with peb­ble mosaics this year?

    Ryan, for garden-making tra­di­tions that go back mil­len­nia I’m sure I’m miss­ing so many sub­tleties and lay­ers of mean­ings. But in the end I try to start with a direct appre­ci­a­tion of these spaces.

    TM, I know I’ve been to the Port­land gar­den, but I have zero rec­ol­lec­tion since that would have been on some cross-country fam­ily trip back in the early 70s.

    Helen, now that you’re a shut-in over the win­ter, maybe doing some­thing with peb­bles would be a good win­ter project. Mosaic step­ping stones or some such?

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