|
Don't get too caught up in the mumbo jumbo aspect of Japanese Gardens. Analyze what is happening within the gardens from a practical design point of view. Look at what is happening with land form, color texture, unity harmony, ...rather than trying to understand philosophies and applying them. You will see more garbage get justified with philosophic crap that a designer thinks they understood and applied.
Japanese gardens use all of the normal design elements, but play them differently. For example, we American landscapers usually gain unity by repetition of actual plants, or color, or texture. Often times the Japanese gardens sneak unity right past us by using landform or rocks to gain unity which allows them to radically contrast plant color, texture, and form without creating a mess. When you see a Bloodgood Japanese Maple in the same composition with, Black Pines, Azaleas, Ilex, Iris, ... and it works, you have to look where the unity is coming from rather than list out the plants.
That was one example, but you really should try to break down the plantings that you see into the basic design elements that are always present. When you think you see something that does not fit our traditional "rules", look further to see if they broke the "rules" or just finessed them in another way. Whenever you get the ability to break down successful planting into basic elements, you can analyze, and then recreate the same flavor no matter what style it is.
Basic plant elements include form, color, and texture. Planting design elements include unity, harmony, rythem, contrast, landform, positive space, negative space, foreground, middle ground, background, and plenty more. Always look for items or elements that are being substituted such as rocks for plants, or water for negative space, etc,...
Sometimes obvious tricks are so basic, but we over complicate them with all the mumbo jumbo philosophy that gets spewed out to twist it into something bigger than it really is. One of my favorites is the Zen raked pebble gardens with a trio of boulders in one corner. All that is just the creation of a vast negative space to empower the positive space created by the rocks. It is the same as a big shade tree in a pasture being much more the center of attention than in when you stand under it in a small court yard.
Design with your practical design knowledge and don't get sucked into the BS aspect. I always think of some HGTV shows when this suject comes up. My favorite Crap philosophy of the day is Feng Shui. I thought I would soil myself when some chump designer threw in some rusty relic into a planting to balance the Feng Shui after most of the rest of the landscape consisted of junk from a box store (including several cans of gawdy paint, tiki torches, and the usual bamboo mats to cover the chain link fence).
Look closely, break it down, and then build it back up. Do I make any sense?
|