[ Lost in the Landscape ]

the huntington’s japanese garden

After 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 you from the Chi­nese Gar­den to the Japan­ese Gar­den.

Along the way, before you get to the gar­den itself, as if in a cal­cu­lated attempt to tran­si­tion the viewer from one gar­den to the next, you pass a cou­ple bloom­ing plants that have “Japan” in their species name. Although most of the camel­lias in bloom were the sansan­quas, a few of the Camel­lia japon­ica plants were start­ing their bloom.

And there was this perky yel­low species, Far­lugium japon­icum–with a plant label (Thank you!–I love my plant labels).

One of the first details that I noticed in the Japan­ese Gar­den was this walk­way edge detail con­sist­ing of lit­tle loops of thin bamboo.

Whereas many of the hard­scape ele­ments in the Chi­nese Gar­den seemed to be built to last for the centuries–this photo shows one of the edg­ing details there–the frag­ile lit­tle detail in the Japan­ese Gar­den appeared to be set up to cel­e­brate the ephemeral.

All the approaches to the gar­den deliver the vis­i­tor to high van­tage points over­look­ing plant­i­ngs around a small pond. A moon bridge pro­vides a focal point.

A recre­ated tra­di­tional upper-class Japan­ese home occu­pies the high­est spot in the garden.

Its doors slide open so that the view from the house is of this gar­den. Stand­ing out­side, you can peer in and get a sense of how life indoors would look like and feel. This struc­ture was moved to this site in 1912, so it and the gar­dens have been around many more years than the Chi­nese Gar­den next door.

Steps from the home lead down and then back up to a walled garden.

A broad walk­way divides the gar­den into two parts. To one side is a sym­bolic gar­den of stones and raked gravel, or Kare­san­sui.

To the other side is a sim­ple plant­ing of clipped aza­leas, ginkgo trees and what I’m guess­ing is lawn. The lawn and the tops of the aza­leas mounds, how­ever, were cov­ered with fallen leaves off the ginkgo trees. I loved this space in its sim­plic­ity and could have spent hours there.

A very few of the ginkgo trees still held on to their star­tling yel­low leaves.

But most of the leaves on the ground were pro­gress­ing from bright yel­low to tan to brown.

Here’s a sug­ges­tion for the Hunt­ing­ton: How about set­ting up a ginkko hot­line or RSS or Twit­ter feed? Desert parks com­monly offer wild­flower hot­lines to alert you of peak flow­er­ing. Some­thing sim­i­lar to let you know when the falling leaves would be at their most spec­tac­u­lar would be great too. Still, it was a gor­geous effect, and it high­lighted the nat­ural process of bright yel­low leaves aging into less col­or­ful ones.

After the walled gar­den is a bon­sai court con­tain­ing some spec­tac­u­lar spec­i­mens in a sim­ple, rus­tic set­ting. The Hunt­ing­ton is in the process of enlarg­ing the dis­play area to make room for more bon­sai.

My last shots from the Japan­ese Gar­den are of two gor­geous stands of bam­boo. A small grove adja­cent to the “model home” has a small wooden path­way through it.

A more mas­sive stand occu­pies a spot at the edge of the gar­den.

Inside the dark thicket Camel­lia sasan­qua blooms.

What is it about a grove of bam­boo that dri­ves vis­i­tors to carve their ini­tials into the culms? Grrrrrrr.

A final look at the rhythms and con­tra­pun­tal inter­play in the bamboo…

December 30 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: bamboo • bonsai • Ginkgo biloba • Huntington Library Art Collections and Botanical Gardens • Japanese gardens • those autumn leaves • walled gardens | 9 Comments »

extreme “bonsai”

Here’s a project that I’ve been think­ing about doing for a while, some­thing that I see com­bines clas­si­cal bon­sai, Euro­pean top­i­ary tra­di­tions, and 60s min­i­mal­ist art. About a month ago I finally took those thoughts out into the gar­den. It’s so much a work in progress at this point, but I think you can see where it’s headed.

This is the front:

And here it is from a slight angle:

The “fin­ished” piece is sim­i­lar to a bon­sai grove in most respects, except than I’ve taken a slice out of the cen­ter of it. Con­cep­tu­ally I see this closely related to my Destruc­tive Test­ing pho­tographs, one of which I’ve posted here. And just as the pho­tographs obsess a bit about the human-culture dynamic and issues of con­trol, I see this piece as deal­ing with sim­i­lar issues, only in liv­ing form.

I started with some sheet steel that I welded into this sculpture/pot (top view):

Angle view:

Then I used stan­dard bon­sai tech­niques to root– and top-prune seven Japan­ese box­wood plants, and then planted them in a casual orchard for­ma­tion. Sev­eral clumps of elfin thyme com­plete the composition.

Sim­i­lar to bon­sai, I see this as a multi-year com­mit­ment. I intend to pinch the growths fre­quently to encour­age finer branch struc­ture, the qual­ity bon­sai peo­ple call “ram­i­fi­ca­tion.” I want the thyme to fill in more, and I plan to even­tu­ally thin the canopy so that you can bet­ter see the struc­ture of the “trees.” With time the con­tainer will weather to a nicely var­ie­gated patina of oxi­dized steel, and the leaves will dimin­ish in size to heighten the sen­sa­tion of miniaturization.

Though ele­vated to a supreme level of “nat­u­ral­ness,” bon­sai is heav­ily about con­trol. Peo­ple look at the lit­tle plants, and quickly see that there’s a human pres­ence under the sur­face of what they’re view­ing. The aims of the art, how­ever, com­bine the minia­tur­iza­tion with an effort to make the plants even more “nat­ural” than they really are–if that’s possible–and to cre­ate a sense of per­fect bal­ance and harmony.

The aims of clas­si­cal Euro­pean top­i­ary are rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent from bonsai’s. But when peo­ple view the shap­ing, sculpt­ing and metic­u­lous prun­ing that are so much a part of top­i­ary, they also reg­is­ter that these are all acts of impos­ing human desires on the nat­ural world.

When­ever this piece is exhib­ited I’ll do a metic­u­lous trim­ming of the slice that’s been taken out of the cen­ter so that the slic­ing of the rec­tan­gle into two por­tions is mir­rored in the plant­ing above.

Will this com­bi­na­tion of an ele­vated nat­u­ral­ism from bon­sai with the bla­tant geom­e­try of the pot and the shear­ing and shap­ing from top­i­ary make the viewer think a bit about how their actions relate to the nat­ural world? I hope so.

I’ll post more in this series once they get to a point worth sharing…

May 15 2008 | Categories: art • my garden | Tags: bonsai • buxus • elfin thyme • Japanese boxwood • minimalist sculpture • topiary | 2 Comments »