I agree to some extent, but the world isn't perfect and not everyone has a perfect view. I would hate to say you couldn't have or enjoy a Japanese Garden if you couldn't see it from your favorite easy chair.

Although you could not enjoy it as much, the garden would still bring you unmeasured delight just working and walking through it.

I am lucky I see our garden not only from our family room but from the kitchen too. These are the most used rooms in our home. But I still enjoy the side gardens I have and would not be without them even though I can only see them from outdoors.

Life isn't perfect but the enjoyment of a garden no matter how it is viewed is worth having.

So I guess I disagree slightly with JOJG. If it isn't possible to have a Japanese garden that can be viewed from your home it can still bring more enjoyment than not having one at all.

Cheers Jando

This one is easy.. compared to all the koan posting lately.

I agree with Jando.....Although, I think we may be
misunderstanding the the JOJG article a little..
Other sources I've read also mentions the ideal situation
of having a garden which can be easily view from inside
of the house. This is an ideal situation only... not
an imperative. Otherwise it would be like saying:
you won't have an ideal Japanese garden.. don't even bother.

I say have your garden and enjoy what is there.
Change what you can change. Perhaps later on you can
have French doors into the garden.

O.K. - I accept what you - Jando & Michael - say. But how strongly would you feel about the need to do something about not having the view? If all else failed I'd feel a really strong urge to at least attach a verandah of some sort to the house (preferably enclosed, depending on the climate) so that I could enjoy the garden from it.

Herb,

Um, is this question more than merely hypothetical? (I can't help imagining that your lovely and sainted wife came home from her bridge club this afternoon, only to find herself wrestling the sledgehammer out of your hands while saying, in voice of studied calm, "Uh, dear - you never know, dear - we may want that wall come February." :)

Of course you want the best view of your garden that you can reasonably obtain. And, of course, you should not reduce yourself to poverty making garden-related home modifications (I'm not sure that any regular poster to this forum *wouldn't* do so, but I know they *shouldn't* :)

Also ask yourself this:
It's the dead of winter. You and your family, each wearing several layers of heavy clothing, are huddled around a small heating unit in a room otherwise nearly devoid of furniture, trying to gain warmth as well as nourishment from bowls of ramen and fishhead soup.
Dire Poverty, or Fine Sukiya Living?

Evelyn :)

PS. Shorter, better answer: Working on a Japanese garden is *never* a waste of time.

Hhehehehe..merely hypothetical or practical..
I can ask that from your postings too, evelyn.

Herb, I don't know how strongly you feel about it.
For me, the garden, the house and all the projects
are in a list of priority.

First was fencing off the noisy neighbor.. that
was an absolute must, can't live without..
Second, will be more fencing off on the other side.
Maybe some planting.. some rock moving... some
chainsawing... digging..Eventually when I will
build a deck and put in some french doors so that
I can see the garden better... but more importantly,
I need the french doors to keep the bedroom cool.
I will have to do some rewiring to remove some outlets
for the french doors... so I think I will wait till
I can plan it out and not have a gaping hole for too
long...

If you feel that strong urge do something about it,
AND if you have the resource, I would do it when the time
is right. I would like to do the french doors now. I've
read books on how to do it and how to rewire, but
there are still many other projects at hand. If I get
done with them before fall, I will rip a hole out for
more air and a nicer view of the garden.

If you're like me, you'd want to many several books-
before doing it yourself.

Herb,

I hate to keep sounding like I'm building the platform for the other party :) so, if you can do attractive, water-tight double glazed sliding or french doors without beggaring youself or disturbing the domestic tranquility, go for it, and I will drool in envy.

OTOH, what's that word - not quite wabi-sabi, but the one for exploring the beauty of undervalued objects?
It'd be intersting to see what you can do for those high, western suburbia windows. There are all those little windows in tea houses with circular openings, and shoji with some elegant lath pattern. Maybe a tree can cast leafy glimpses and shadows into the window, or a trellis can wind it round with moonflowers - that could be lovely on the bedroom window, with the glass open on a warm night, the soft chiming of a little poem card bell as you waft towards sleep...

wafting towards sleep myself,

Evelyn

Finally - a thread that thinks about placing stones instead of throwing them...Thanks Herb.

A JG always exists in the mind of the garden builder and in the mind of anybody who has experienced its particular mood. You don't have to experience it all day from every room to keep it in your mind. It is never a waste of time.

I would pose a related question - how do you balance your energy/resources/time to pursue a garden you live among instead of next to ? An integrated garden/house may be perfection, but the difficulty of attaining it is not the point, it is useful to clarify that difficult goal so we know what direction to travel.

It is possible to remodel the house, to tear off that high deck, to change room placement if it is important to you. What do you experience in your garden? Is it an experience you want to have more often? How do you experience your garden in the winter? Is it lost until spring, or is it right there, immutable stones frozen in snow outside a wall of glass?

In short, I don't think a garden isolated from the house is as enriching as one integrated with the house. I can't clearly see where good turns to bad however, only where the path might be.

If I stand at my shop door I look past a small pond with a bamboo spout trickling water into it and down a stone path through a bamboo grove. The pond is a preformed heavy plastic one because the bamboo rhizomes would pierce a liner and I lack the means for clay or concrete. The path has a diminishing perspective and the foreground has the larger stones which gives the spot great depth. Not a window in the house gives me that view and I am not about to saw the concrete foundation to add one. There is a garden bench to sit on and if you sit there for five minutes you can tell me if it's a waste of time.
JOJG is run by a Naval Academy grad who was trained to be an elitist from his teen years so you have to temper his opinions with where he comes from. Someday I will forgo my subscription and use the funds to buy a pair of Okatsune thinning shears but for now I still await each issue.

O.K., 'Waste of time' was putting it too strongly, but it did attract attention.....

Now that I think about it, maybe I should have headed it - 'How would you improve your Japanese Garden enjoyment if you won the lottery?"

The question, actually wasn't entirely hypothetical. When we bought our house (I'd told the realtor that we insisted on what they call a rear view house) the only view of the back yard from the Family Room was from a window with a high sill. Several years later when I could afford it, we had it removed and replaced by sliding patio doors, added a patio, and later added a roof overhanging part of the patio so that we could sit there even if it was raining.

We don't have shoji screens, but maybe the lottery will ease our sense of deprivation and enable us to remove part of the patio and plant bamboo to cast shadows on them......

You know, I wouldn't want the JOJG to be anything but elitist. I know I can't afford the quality it insists on, but it does create an impulse to aim higher: and I think that's probably a good thing?

Herb,
I bluntly recommend the following course of action:
1) Reach into your wallet and remove the funds necessary to buy approximately 30 losing lottery tickets.
2) Go to your fovorite nursery and/or winery and spend those 30 bucks on a half-barrel planter.
3) Spend another 30 or so lottery ticket equivalents on bamboo (running is fine: it won't get far :)
4) Plant up the bamboo in the half-barrel, place it outside the window that needs its most, and remember to water like mad.
5) Open a beer and congratulate yourself on your very nice garden :)

- Evelyn

Evelyn,

Your advice is so logical & persuasive that I feel the urge to do just that.

Now I'm wrestling with the the decision whether to plant bamboo in the planter or that Acer pseudosieboldianum that I saw & coveted yesterday....or buy two planters and plant both.

NIce post Herb...
When we bought our new house, the realtor described me as a man looking for a lot with a house on it. The front of the house which can be seen from the living room and dining room was apprporiated by her for her floppy left brain type cottage garden (its okay, it gives me an opportunity to go crazy with colour) but the back yard was mine, mine ALL MINE! The advantage is that the master bedroom opens onto the yard at ground level and the first thing I see after I open my eyes in the am (after I put my glasses on) is my turtle island, my 100$ varigated white pine and the new teahouse/waiting area in the back yard.
The next project will be to find a way of ripping out the large window and replace with sliders so's i can walk out into it without going through the rest of the house.
So its a good question that you proposed with your response...'How would you improve your Japanese Garden enjoyment if you won the lottery?"

Heres my list
1) More maples- gotta have em!
2) 2 truckloads of good topsoil- need some berms to kkep out the forest
3) sliding doors to replace above mentioned bedroom windows
4) 2 hand carved lanterns- 1 Katsura for the entrance outside the main gate (yet to be built) and 1 Yukumi Gata for the side of the pond to replace the current concrete one

For now thats all. A man can dream can't he?

Coachsmyth,

It's a coincidence, but the site that I mentioned in the new 'Spirit of the Garden' thread has another interesting sentence in it -

"Enclosed by a wall or hedge, the gardens are not meant to be entered physically but rather explored mentally from a seated position in the nearby room or its veranda. This gave rise to a new use of a garden, specifically as an object of contemplation - similar to the way a painting or a sculpture would be viewed."

That, of course, is a reference to one specific sort of garden, but I think it adds weight to the idea that it's a generally good thing for most domestic Japanese Gardens if there's a good view of them from inside the house? -

Click here

Nice thread,

I have found that I should quit worrying whether or not I was doing it right and just enjoy working in the gartden. This is the satifaction. Not whether its astetics are pleasing to others but that I enjoyed working in the garden itself.

Musky

Interesting how the prescribed way to best enjoy a Japanese garden is through a French door.....:):):)

Susan

Indeed - and with a Scotch in hand, eh?......:):):)

Really Herb, I would at least prescribe Kirin or Sapporo Lager.....but Scotch????

Steve -

Certainly Scotch - and with Yama and Inkognito for company, a Single Malt at that - preferably Mortlach.

But definitely not Suntory, nor Japanese beer: Saki perhaps.

For beer, the best one there is - Samuel Smith Old Brewery Pale Ale. Failing that, Okocim from Poland, and failing that Tsing Tao from China.

And some real Samosas from India. Not the rubbishy things they try to pass off as Samosas here in Canada.

All to be consumed by them, you and me, while sitting in your Teahouse.

Globalism at its best :)

I understand that the Japanese tend to be great appreciators of Scotch whiskey: one more reason to respect their collective aesthetic :)
There are even Scotch-style whiskeys brewed in Japan. Coachsmyth may wish to obtain one for that sake of authenticity, leaving that much more for Yama, INKognito, Herb, me and all the Japanese drinkers of Scotch who can afford the imported stuff :)

Slainte!

- Evelyn

PS. I have also read that the Japanese are great appreciators of Chinese food, considering it, in the words of one author, "the height of gormandism."

If anybody's been wondering what connection there is between food and drink and Japanese Gardening, I think it's noteworthy that Japanese restaurants often seem to have gardens.

Perhaps the garden and the food each enhances the enjoyment of the other?

I'd be quite prepared to test the theory, though I'm not keen on taking it to the point of eating Fugu. But it must be quite a way to die - the aesthetic of the garden and the aesthetic of Fugu, both at once?

Click here for a restaurant garden, though I don't know if they serve Fugu.

From the looks of the place you could probably get a side of soba noodles with your hamburger

Get you Herb, reminiscing over the smooth, distinctive flavour of Sam Smiths' Old Brewery Pale !! Can you buy such a heavenly taste over there or are you living on memories ?

Niwashisan -

We have to live most of the time on memories. In most of Canada (other than Quebec) the sale of alcohol is run on lines very similar to how the old Soviet Union was run - virtually the only places where you're allowed to buy it to take home are stores run by the government.

Now & again - usually around Christmas - they may deign to import a few and if we may get lucky we may find a few Samuel Smiths on the shelves.

It's even against the law to send a bottle through the post. Quite unlike Australia. In Australia, the post offices not only have posters encouraging you to send a bottle of wine through the post, but sell styrofoam containers designed for the purpose.

I love Australia.

I have to disagree with you, Herb. My little Japanese garden is at the farthest end of my 200 ft deep lot. It cant be seen until you walk around the exuberantly planted sunny cottage garden and tropical beds closer to the house. It comes as a total surprise to turn the corner and be greeted with a shady haven, with a beckoning pathway lacing thru it. Each turn of the path reveals a small vignette. I think the unexpected peaceful, quiet area after passing thru riotous color makes the Japanese garden seem much more special. I think if the Japanese garden was the first thing you saw from the house it would not have the same impact and feeling of specialness it now has.

Does your garden reveal its beauty all at once? Or, does it draw you into the garden, revealing itself layer by layer?
Are those images which await, just out of view, a waste of time?

I liked Louis William's comments!

John

Egret Flower...

{{gwi:1009772}}

Sue -

I have to concede that no garden that you enjoy is a waste of time - & I overstated the case for being able to see it from the house. It's just my own personal preference.

IMHO, you should be able see or sense pleasant little parts of the garden from the house: the shadow of bamboo on the window blind, the scent of a twining blossom, the sound of a breeze in the top of the pines. These should be invitations, teasers, appetizers - but the main course, or the series of sequential small courses, should not be served up at once.

[The food/garden link (and analogy:) seems apropos to me in that cuisine, in its high and low forms, is an art that we all directly experience everyday. Thus it only makes sense to link it to another art form that we as J. gardeners are seeking to experience everyday.]

- Evelyn

PS. Herb - that feeling you get, as you sit on your Berber carpet, looking out through the French doors at your Japanese garden, Scotch whiskey in hand and properly Indian samosas at your elbow - is the word for that feeling "Gemutlichkeit?" ;)

Evelyn,

German isn't, alas, one of my languages, but yes, I believe Gemutlichkeit does describe a sort of 'God's in his heaven & all's right with the world' sensation. (Wouldn't it be great if all really were right with the world?)

Herb

Herb,

and I thought that life for an ex-pat was really comfortable over there. the way you describe it makes it sound like you are in exile. If we were like the Australians and had access to those nifty styrofoam tubes then I would send you a bottle or two of the Old pale ale.

Niwashisan -

That was a very nice thought. But it's just as well that the styrofoam tubes aren't sold in Britain. When I was working in Hong Kong, we took several holidays in Australia. Once, while there, I went into a Sydney Post Office & posted to our son, in Canada, a bottle of Australian wine.

When we got back to Hong Kong there was an anguished letter from son -

"Canada Customs have seized it. They say it must be either -
1. Sent back to where it came from, or,
2. Destroyed."

Well, I ask you. After much protest, son found a sympathetic bureacrat (perhaps a Quebecer - they tend to be more understanding in such matters) who relented & offered to send it instead to Hong Kong - provided son paid the postage. Which he did.....

Crimony, Herb, I thought US blue laws were bad :(

Yes, "Gemutlichkeit" is a sort of feeling of 'God's in his heaven & all's right with the world', with a shade of 'even if not, things are pretty darned pleasant just here and now, and I am very content to enjoy them in this moment'.

My intention was to see how many different national references I could shoehorn into the vignette (I now realize that the carpet should be Persian :), not to give you a run for your multilingual money. "Gemutlichkeit" is sometimes (apparently not often enough :) used as an example of a word than has no exact equivalent in English, presumably because English speakers are so little inclined to contently enjoy pleasant moments that they don't need a word for the state of such enjoyment.

Guessing that French may be one of your languages, I will confess that to being so French-deficient that I tend to pronunce "raison d'etre" as if it meant "reason for singing cowboys (e.g. Gene Autry :)", and have been warned that travel to Quebec could be hazardous to my health unless I improve in this area :) :) :)

Au revoir,

- evelyn

Before I crack open something for this evening, I'd best respond with a couple of questions.
1. Can you see the garden from the restaurant?
2. Where's the house in Portland?
3. If the garden is on a slope, how can you tour it in your mind?

I believe "Gorfram" said it wisely with...
PS. Shorter, better answer: Working on a Japanese garden is *never* a waste of time.
That's satisfying to me.
Just got back from Portland and I want to post a query in a new thread after having visited the Japanese Garden there (for the fifth time or so). Maybe this'll get us to wondering about it all as well.
Regards and campai!
Dave

Dave,

Your question 1 - I assume you can see some of the garden from some tables in the restaurant. But I was wrong to think it was in Japan. It appears to be in Denver.

Your questions 2 & 3 go way over my head.

Herb

I am fresh from a visit to the PDX garden. It's a mix of various "kinds" of JGardens, as you know. I was kidding about the house 'cause in the stroll garden, there is none, neither is there any house near the zen garden. There is a pavillion with suitable porches etc. for viewing the flat garden (hira niwa).
I suspect one might be much more content with his jgarden should it be located near the house, on a fairly flat piece of ground with a large window or enclosed porch to view it from. BUT even without windows in the house, you can still go outside and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
BEST SCENARIO - great garden, large porch/window. NEXT BEST, more common, I'm sure - great garden.

Dave

3 questions for you all:

1) Do you have Japanese MGs growing in your garden?

2) If so, are they in the ground or in containers?

3) If in containers, what size?