Hi Klemac,

I finally found time to pull up your garden pics and I enjoyed the meandering gravel path (aka river) you have developed! A nice use of shrubbery and natural-looking rock arrangements along the river path, too.

Looks like you have some lawn space in the middle of the yard- what are your plans here?

One suggestion for future ideas to develop this area is to get some ideas from appropriate books, if you don't already have a definite plan...
My personal favorite along this line is the series "Garden Views" (4 volumes), published in Japan. I know this series is a favorite of some in this forum, and it is certainly one of mine. I try to steal ideas from this series every chance I get :-).

Best wishes as you develop your yard, and thanks for sharing your pictures!
Jim

I think that you have made a good start and have included quite a few elements of Japanese type gardens. It is probably a challenge to find the plants that you desire in Croatia.
I like the moss that covers the ground under the bamboo.
I think that the area needs enclosure and definition so you can view the gaarden from "within".
I am torn with what to do with the white wall. Yojimbo's advice to refer to books should lead you in the right direction.
A picture showing the whole area would help to give a feel for the overall picture and trigger more comments/suggestions.

Hi,
I was pretty busy for last few days and haven't much time to be on forum. I have read yours replays and I am glad to see you both realize areas make me troubles.I am really not quite sure what to do with lawn beside the gravel path.Some ideas from existing JG probably can help. I like to try to find books Yojimbo mentioned but need to know some details about( full title, author, publisher...) I really will be thankful. another problem spot is white wall. I have planted some kind of climber (partenocisus tricuspidata) to cover the wall, but I'm not sure is it a right solution. I have thinking of covering the wall with bamboo poles, making some kind of bamboo fence. What do you think of that? It's just a part of many problems but "step by step".Making a Japanese garden here in Croatia is "Mission Impossible". Plants I can find somehow (prices is quite high) but any kinds of ornaments or materials connected with JG (lanterns, thick bamboo poles, shuro nawa or something else) N/A. Lovers of JG are very rare here and market don't offer stuffs for that kind of hobby. So any help from you, people on the forum is priceless.Many things like books or something else not bulky I must purchase from USA or UK. I hope I will find those books Yojimbo use as some sort of reference. I will post some pictures of whole backyard area as soon I can.Thank you both for good advices.

For an exhaustive list of books on JGardens see the FAQ page listed at the top of the opening page of this forum.

I second looking at the FAQ, there are a ton of good book suggestions in there. It is almost "exhaustive" :-)

For turning one's yard into a garden, it might be wise to focus one's idea-gathering to pics of smaller gardens- i.e., so-called "courtyard" gardens (tsubo niwa). There are plenty of courtyard-garden books listed in the FAQ, so I don't think our friend klemac will have any trouble finding resources. However, some of the best of these tend to be published in Japan and have Japanese titles, so it's kind of hard to obtain them sometimes. Getting a desired book from a library (inter-library loan) is always an option; I've been able to read several otherwise unobtainable books that way. One's library is a good source for obtaining out-of-print garden books too, also via interlibrary-loan.