framing the garden view

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

I men­tioned how there were many lay­ers to the spaces there. The fol­low­ing are some of the doors and win­dows in the gar­den that help to frame the views and con­tribute to the sense of layering.

Leaf-shaped win­dow near the Stu­dio of Pure Scents.

Stacked por­tals of the Ter­race of the Jade Mirror.

These last two win­dows in the out­side wall, the Wall of the Col­or­ful Clouds, are inter­est­ing in that they’re not per­fect squares. The top, left and right sides form part of a square, but their bot­tom sides par­al­lel the con­tours of rolling ground where the wall is sited. Even though you’re look­ing at an ele­ment in the human-created hard­scape, this tech­nique acknowl­edges the earth where the wall stands.

Yet to come: posts on the Huntington’s Japan­ese Gar­den, Con­ser­va­tory and Desert Gar­den.

December 29 2009 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: • • • •

5 Responses to “framing the garden view”

  1. tina on 29 Dec 2009 at 6:50 am #

    Lay­ers in a gar­den are super great. The peek­holes are most interesting.

  2. Barbara on 29 Dec 2009 at 8:02 am #

    Hi James, so nice that you made time for a visit. I live 1.5 miles from the Hunt­ing­ton and go far too rarely! Your pic­tures remind me that this is a must-do for me and the fam­ily dur­ing the hol­i­day — maybe even today. Thanks for you beau­ti­ful pic­tures and thought­ful com­ments. barbara

  3. Country Mouse on 29 Dec 2009 at 5:12 pm #

    I’ve never thought about Chi­nese gar­dens before — very inter­est­ing. The views through the dif­fer­ent lay­ers remind me of = children’s pup­pet the­aters, lay­ers of scenery to give three D effect. Must be an early mem­ory of mine I guess. Inter­est­ing detail about the shape of the windows.

  4. Pomona Belvedere on 29 Dec 2009 at 5:19 pm #

    You did a much bet­ter job of pho­tograph­ing some of the Chi­nese gar­den effects than I did when I went there last year (it had JUST opened, and a lot of bare dirt was in evi­dence, but unfor­tu­nately I can’t claim that as the prob­lem with most of my photos).

    Bar­bara, if I lived that near the Hunt­ing­ton, I would irri­tate groundskeep­ers try­ing to close the place by being found skulk­ing, lost in time, in the suc­cu­lents, roses, and bon­sais. And those are just some of the ones I know to come back to now.

  5. lostlandscape on 01 Jan 2010 at 1:46 pm #

    Tina, there’s lots of ideas to bor­row from this gar­den, even if you’re not mak­ing a Chi­nese garden.

    Bar­bara, funny how some of the clos­est things are some of the least vis­ited. I hope you get a chance to visit there soon.

    CM, all my talk about the lay­er­ing was just a strong impres­sion I had, and I’m not sure how much was inten­tional. Part of the idea is to make a gar­den vista like a scroll paint­ing, which would be made of sev­eral ele­ments. I’m sure some of the views were designed to incor­po­rate vis­tas towards the moun­tains to the north.

    Pomona, thank you! The late-afternoon win­ter light really helped the gar­dens have more char­ac­ter than they might in the spring­time when the gar­den opened. I know what you mean about the grounds peo­ple hav­ing to chase you out of the gar­dens. I only had two hours to cover four gar­dens. Total access at all times of day with­out hav­ing to worry about the 4:30 clos­ing time would have been pretty wonderful.

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