How to Build a Japanese Garden

 

Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Veezhunnidam Vishnulokham.

Malayalam Proverb

If you have a problem like lot of junk or soil erosion in your backyard, try to solve it with a Japanese Garden! That is what I did. My house is at the bottom of a slope. When it rains beyond three days, soil saturates and all the water from the neighbor’s yard ends up in my yard and which caused considerable soil erosion. So I decided to build a Japanese garden in the backyard.
Backyard filled with junk.

A typical Japanese garden may have the following,

a) Stream. It can be a wet stream with continuous run off or dry stream with occasional run off during rains or snow melt

b) Pond. It can be as small as to hold a bamboo fountain or as big as to maintain a school of Koi fishes.

c) Bridges. The common bridges used are - Arch bridge, stone bridge and zig-zag bridge

d) Stones and bamboo

e) Plants, trees, grass and stepables.

f) Pathway. For a stroll in the garden, the pathway may be made of pebbles, stepping stones, stepables, grass or a combination of these.

g) Lanterns, bamboo fence, bamboo fountain and tea house

Japanese garden is known for its simplicity. So, avoid any artificial building materials like plastic, concrete, bricks, metals etc. Even if you use it, hide it under the grass, pebbles etc. The commonly used materials are stones, pebbles, wood and bamboo. Before starting to build the garden, read couple of books about Japanese gardening, visit local Japanese gardens if any and search the web for different types of designs.

Every theory is to be challenged and can be re-written.

Don’t go by the theory prescribed in the books. Use your creativity and ingenuity to come up with your own design and use the theory just for the guidelines.

A) Building the stream.

First identify the entry and exit points of the run-off in your backyard if you have a run-off problem. Mark the ground with a marker or stick from entry point to exit point along the direction of run off. Usually it will be the lowest points in your backyard. Remove the grass and soil on either side of the marked line. Depending on the expected volume of the run off, dig a gully of about one feet deep and 3 feet wide. Make sure you are building a stream not a river!. So avoid making too wide and too deep stream. Landscaping fabric (also called geo-textiles) is ideal for controlling soil erosion. I bought a roll of landscape fabric from Costco and roll it out along the stream. Place stones over the fabric and hide the edges of the fabric under the grass. In the end, the stream should look as natural as possible. In Japanese, the dry stream is called Karenagare. If you are building a pump operated wet stream, replace landscape fabric with a pond liner to avoid water loss. Web sites of Lowes and Home depot provide the know-how of building water features in your garden.
Dry stream filled with snow melt.

B) Building the Pond.

The pond should be proportional to the garden. It should not be too big to take up most of the garden space. Usually, two types of pond materials are used - prefabricated PVC (hard) and pond liner (flexible). Pond liner should not be used if the water table rises to the surface during rainy season. If the water table rises above the pond bottom, the liner will float causing your expensive Koi to escape!. You can pump the water out of the pond if the water table rises just like the sump pump in your basement. All these will complicate your pond construction if you use liners in high water table area. However, liners help you to make the pond of your dream. You can build a pond which ever shape you want.
I used prefabricated Polyethelen pond from Lowes as I have a high water table in my backyard. If you are building a Koi pond, you may end up using pond liner. Koi requires lot of space. Pre-fabricated ponds do not come in such large sizes.

c) Building the bridge.

Arch bridge is the most common bridge used in a Japanese garden. Use your carpentary skills to build the arch bridge. The span of the bridge should longer than the width of the stream. Some times, you can even buy small arch bridges from your garden center. I bought the arch bridge from BigLots. For stone bridge, get a long and flat stone to cover the length of the stream. Usually long stepping stones will suffice for small streams.

Zig-Zag bridges are less common in Japanese gardens, but often mentioned in Japanese poetry. I bought lumber remnants from Home Depot to build the zig-zag bridge. Use your creativity to build the zig-zag bridge. Zig-zag bridge is called Yatsuhashi, arch bridge is called Soribashi and stone bridge is called Ishibashi.

D) Stones and Bamboo.

The common stones used are Glacier stone for dry stream, stepping stones for stone bridge and pathway, river and pea pebbles for pathway and granite stones as stand alone 'statues'. Avoid chiseled stones or any stones undergone 'human intervention'. Choose couple of granite rocks to use like statues in the garden. Every rock has its own beauty of abstractness.

Help yourself by helping others.

Best way to get bamboo is to get it free! First, become a member of garden web (GardenWeb) bamboo forum. Sent a message to the bamboo newsgroup, requesting that you are looking for bamboo. Depending on where you live, you may get lot of responses. The truth of the fact is that, there are a lot of home owners out there who were carried away by the beauty of the bamboo, only to watch in horror when it ran over their backyard. Now, visit each location and decide which bamboo you want. I got my bamboo from an old couple, whose backyard was run over by Hunan bamboo. That was the most beautiful horror I have ever seen! With this bamboo, you can make bamboo fountain, bamboo fence or any other things your creativity suggests.

E) Plants for the garden
Japanese gardens are simple and more towards the greenish side of the spectrum. So avoid too many flowering plants. Plants like Japanese maple, Magnolias, etc are best suited. Long grasses (with long blades) like zebra grasses make the garden look better. Japanese Iris is good option for flowering plants. A cluster of Hostas along the pathway are a good option. Planting perennials offer less maintenance of the garden.

Bamboo is an integral part of a Japanese garden. If you are planning to plant bamboo, make sure it is clump type and not running type. If at all you are planting running type, make hundred percent sure that it is contained within a rhizome barrier. Otherwise, you are making your neighbors hate you.

Hardy water Lilly can survive moderate winter climates. Before winter, submerge the roots below 2 feet. However, always follow the instructions. I bought couple of water Lillis from WalMart and it survived two Virginia winters. My children love to watch frogs resting on Lilly pads.

It is not a good idea to expose the entire garden space with bare soil. Cover it with grass, pebbles or stones. However, the problem with grass is that it grows vertically up. Mowing and trimming in small areas is cumbersome and spread trimmings all over. The best alternative is stepables. Stepables are mostly creepers which grows side ways. I filled the garden with a stepable called Creeping Jenny. I bought it from Meadow Farms, Virginia. Within 2 seasons, it filled the garden. Flowering stepables bloom during the spring season and remain green through out the rest of the seasons. Creeping Phlox is a good alternative, though not a stepable.


F) Pathway
You build the garden to enjoy it. To enjoy, you have to take stroll through the garden. So, build a pathway which snakes through the garden. If you are using stepping stones, you can surround it with stepables, pebbles or gravel. If you plan to use pebbles or gravel, run a landscape fabric below it. This will prevent weeds. Border the pathway with tennis ball sized stones to prevent pebbles to spread or to prevent grass to encroach the pathway. The pathway may cross a stone bridge, arch bridge, zig-zag bridge or stepping stones in the water.
G) Lanterns, bamboo fence, bamboo fountain

A Japanese garden may have any one or all of these features depending on the space. Stone lanterns called Ishidoro ( or simply Toro) is the most common among them. Keep the lantern at the most appealing location. A location where you think it will provide the best visual happiness. I bought the lantern from the local garden center (Meadow Farms) in Virginia.

You can come up with different designs for a bamboo fence. Refer a Japanese gardening book for design ideas. Bamboo fence is usually kept along the edges of the garden thus providing a visual background to the garden. A six feet tall metallic fence runs along the border of my Japanese garden. I grew English Ivy on it completely hiding the fence and providing a beautiful green background. Later, I found out that English Ivy is invasive species like Burning Bush, Ice Plant etc., so I destroyed it. Now, I have to figure out how to cover the fence. May be, Clematis is an option. I built a simple bamboo fence in front of it.

Most of the Japanese gardens are ubiquitous with at least one bamboo fountain. Two common types are Tsukubai (basin fountain) and Shishi-Odoshi (deer chaser). You do not have to go by the theory, use your ingenuity to build your own type. I used a battery operated bilge pump to power the fountain. I have a battery operated back up sump pump. I used the same battery to power the bilge pump. This way I can prolong the life of the battery.
There is no such thing as perfection.

It took me four years to bring the garden to this level. Every time I dug for the pond, my then five year old son wanted to 'help' me by putting the soil back into the pond. His 'help' considerably delayed the construction of the pond!. He enjoyed it as much as I do. I kept on improving it and I still think there is room for improvement. For example, I would like to build a better bamboo fence. I ran out of bamboo while making the current fence. So, it is time pay a visit to those terror stricken bamboo growers.

Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil.

(If you have a garden and a library, you have everything)

Roman Philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero

Veezhunnidam Vishnulokham.
(Make heaven where you live)

Malayalam Proverb

 

Things to remember:

1) Do not clutter the garden with so many things,
2) Makes the garden as simple as possible,
3) Involve your kids. They just love to get dirty in the mud,
4) Keep the cost down such as by buying remnants,
5) Avoid using lot of flowering plants,
6) Buy or get few Japanese gardening books to get different ideas.
7) Avoid gaudy lighting and statues in the garden,
9) Avoid mulching of large areas within the garden except very close to plants,
10) Don't rush to finish your garden. Take two steps forward, take one step back, re-design, take two steps forward again and use your creativity,
11) Most of the items for Japanese garden are difficult to get from local garden centers, so search online.