How Asian gardens have taken root in America - Financial Times

Posted: 18 Jan 2019 12:00 AM PST

On the edge of Vancouver's bustling Chinatown is a nondescript square surrounded by low-rise concrete buildings. It is an easy spot to overlook, yet it houses something out of the ordinary: a bronze bust of a sombre-looking moustachioed man sits on a plinth in front of a circular, cast stone moon gate, for centuries a defining feature of Chinese gardens.

The bust is of Sun Yat-sen, the nationalist leader of the revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty in 1911. He is still known as the father of modern China. Over his shoulder, through the moon gate, is a classical Chinese scholar's garden created in his honour.

Built between 1985 and 1986, in time for the Vancouver Expo, the main garden was designed by architect Wang Zu-Xin, with support from the Landscape Architecture Company of Suzhou in China. Suzhou is home to some of the most important Chinese classical gardens, with histories stretching back to the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127).

Japanese Tea Garden, San Francisco Alamy © John S Lander/LightRocket via Getty Images

Classical Chinese gardens were designed to represent or reflect larger landscapes in miniature. Enclosed within usually white-painted walls, views are carefully contrived through the routing of walkways and the placement of rocks and plants. A peculiarity of classical Chinese gardens is that outside of their home country there are very few of note — making the Dr Sun Yat-sen Garden a rarity.

The same can be said of traditional Japanese gardens. Classical western styles of garden design, however, have proliferated around the globe and retained in many cases a high degree of authenticity. A visitor can enjoy Roman gardens in California, take a stroll through a French parterre in Washington DC or visit a number of English rose gardens without leaving Japan.

The Humble Administrator's Garden, Suzhou, China © Alamy

Comparative cultural isolation is one reason why Japanese and Chinese gardens have travelled only fitfully around the globe, with both nations at various times closed to the outside world. Meanwhile, from the late 1500s onwards, western garden styles have blended and developed regardless of international boundaries.

Nonetheless, the stretch of coast from Northern California into British Columbia is a hotspot for good quality classical oriental gardens. The presence of sizeable ethnic Chinese and Japanese populations has helped to create the demand, tradition and expertise required to keep them going. Such is the case in Vancouver — which is also home to the excellent Nitobe Japanese garden — and San Francisco, with its notable Japanese Tea Garden, the oldest public garden of its type in North America. The prevailing climate is also a factor, with relatively high rainfall and comparatively benign temperatures suiting the verdant, mossy greens, ericaceous shrubs and pines that are features of these gardens.

Regardless of the legions of admirers who might aspire to have one, Japanese and Chinese gardens are hard to replicate. Jake Hobson, a pruning expert whose company Niwaki specialises in Japanese gardening, craft and home tools, explains: "Classical oriental gardens are designed to reflect the landscape, a microcosm of nature perfected." Zen or karesansui gardens, for example, are inspired by the views of islands at sea. Rocks are placed to represent islands or coastal outcrops, while carefully controlled raked gravel suggests the ocean.

"You can go to the coast in Japan and see the specific views that have inspired them," says Hobson. "Every element of a Japanese garden has its place and is a suggestion of place." It means western gardeners face a challenging proposition in trying to recreate a Zen garden, never mind an Imperial stroll garden, where a circuit path is designed to be promenaded in a clockwise direction, whereupon carefully contrived views are revealed.

The Portland Japanese Garden © Tyler Quinn

"There's a terrible danger of lurching into pastiche when trying to recreate a Japanese or Chinese garden," says Hobson. "People often take the most memorable elements from different styles of oriental gardens as if they are browsing pages in a gardening book. Then they stick them together and it all looks wrong — because each style is an individual page in the book, and not to be combined."

From a planting perspective, classical Chinese and Japanese gardens "all look quite similar", using a limited palette of plants and styles, says Hobson. "It's not about variety," he adds. "A traditional Japanese garden isn't 'gardened' in the way a western garden is. You don't get on your knees and plant bulbs each year. Change happens more naturally, if there is change at all."

Maintenance is another area where attempts to recreate Japanese and Chinese gardens can fall flat. Pruning is a constant intervention, as is path sweeping and gravel raking. Without committed and attentive care the subtle aesthetics that define these gardens are rapidly lost.

The influence of the classical gardens of Suzhou is evident in the Dr Sun Yat-sen Garden. Of these, The Humble Administrator's Garden (in Chinese Zhou Zheng Yuan) is perhaps the best-known. It has gone through 900 years of evolution, including at times near-total destruction. Unlike the vast imperial gardens such as the Summer Palace in Beijing, that are designed to show off dynastic wealth and power, smaller gardens such as The Humble Administrator's were intended as a means of reflective escape from the world. Now a Unesco world heritage site, the 5.2ha plot houses pavilions, galleried walkways, zigzag footpaths and stylised miniature landscapes that are the hallmarks of classical Chinese gardens.

The Portland Japanese Garden © Bruce Forster Photography

Many of these motifs are found in the Dr Sun Yat-sen Garden. A galleried walkway affords changing views of the enclosed garden, at the centre of which is a rocky island topped with a pavilion and surrounded by trees. From the gallery are views through latticework windows into the outer landscape garden.

Sun visited Vancouver three times while fundraising and increasing awareness of the nationalist movement among the Chinese community there, which today is one of the largest in North America. When the plans for the garden were revealed in the 1980s many local families made donations.

The Portland Japanese Garden © Jack Jakobsen

Some 500km south in Portland, Oregon, the creation of the Portland Japanese Garden was driven by the desire to forge a healing connection between American and Japanese people in the wake of the second world war. Then Mayor Terry Schrunk and members of the Portland community selected the site of an old zoo in Washington Park for the garden. Professor Takuma Tono of Tokyo Agricultural University was appointed to take on the design, which today consists of five different garden styles over a 5.5-acre site.

The Portland garden gives visitors the unusual opportunity to experience a range of classical Japanese garden styles in one place. The karesansui Sand and Stone garden is a contemplative space in the style of a monastic garden from the late 1300s, while the Strolling Pond garden is an example of the larger landscape gardens popular among the aristocracy of the Edo period (1603-1867). The range of different styles is a departure from a classical, single-style Japanese garden, but each element has been beautifully executed and is, crucially, expertly maintained.

For anyone seeking to experience classical Chinese and Japanese gardens at their absolute best there is no alternative to a first-hand visit to the countries where it all began, to absorb not just the gardens but the cultures and landscapes that inspired them. But for those with an interest in seeing how the style can translate successfully to western landscapes, the north-west of the American coast is the place to go.

Matthew Wilson is a landscape and garden designer and horticultural consultant

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The Best-Designed Building in Every U.S. State - Architectural Digest

Posted: 22 May 2019 12:00 AM PDT

In many ways, architecture is a balancing act. The best buildings retain many of the qualities within collectivism (prioritizing the group over any one person) while also maintaining a degree of individualism. This is not a simple feat, which is why we often walk past so many structures without ever taking the time to notice them. But when it does happen—when a building causes us to pause and ponder—it allows us to see ordinary objects in a completely new way. To be sure, the U.S. is a country filled with stunning architecture. And this fact is not restricted to coast, region, or state. Indeed, each state has its own claim in possessing stunningly beautiful architecture, buildings that further add to the ever-changing tapestry that is American culture. So much so, that we at AD decided to break down each state in the U.S. (including Washington, D.C.) to determine which building stands out among all the rest. At its core, architecture moves past its function as merely a building and turns into a landmark once it's made a distinct presence on a city's identity. We believe these structures do just that.