California Japanese-Style Gardens: Tradition and Practice

A small grove of ginkgoes (Ginkgo biloba) and a carpet of mondo grass (Ophiopogon japonicus) symbolize a forest at one end of the Zen garden, Huntington Botanical Gardens. Photograph by James Folsom

A season can be counted in days; a garden’s life counted in hundreds of years.

Garden making was barely underway in California when, in the late nineteenth century, Americans became enamored of Japanese culture and art, including gardens. Suddenly, a thousand-year-old tradition involving many styles of gardens in Japan became telescoped into American gardens called “Japanese,” featuring the natural arrangement of water, stone, and plants, embellished with picturesque lanterns, a variety of bridges and garden buildings, and artistically pruned plants.

Stone bridge across the lower pond in the Storrier Stearns Garden. Author's photograph

This fashion for Japanese gardens spread rapidly after Japan, isolated for several centuries from foreigners, opened its borders for trade with the United States in 1858. Beginning with the 1893 World’...