| "Making Japanese
Miniature Gardens" (1920):
The miniature garden industry in
Japan has been transplanted to the United States. For several centuries
the leading landscape gardeners of Japan have made miniature models of
their work so their customers might see how the proposed gardens would
look; very much in the same way an American architect will make a prospective
drawing of a house, except in this case the garden is made perfect in every
detail, except that it is in miniature.
The care and degree of exactness
put into these gardens is remarkable. Great care is used to select
exactly the right kind of stones, sand and pebbles to use in each part
of the design. Trees are even dwarfed and stunted through many years
of careful watching in order that they may add to the completeness of the
picture.
These miniature gardens are called
in Japanese, “Hako Niwa,” meaning dish gardens, because they are usually
built in large earthenware bowls. Every Japanese garden contains
a stream or lake with one or more bridges spanning from shore to shore.
If a natural body of water does not exist, the landscape gardener simply
goes ahead and makes it.
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| Publishers’ Photo Service. |
Publishers’ Photo Service. |
AN EXCELLENT EXAMPLE
OF A MINIATURE GARDEN
This little garden is built to represent one of the quaint
little villages of Japan.
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REPRESENTING A TWISTED CEDAR
OF JAPAN
This miniature cedar is exactly similar to those
seen frequently on the mountain sides of Japan. This tree is actually
twenty-two years old.
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For a number of years an annual
contest or exhibit of these toy gardens has been held in the city of Kioto,
at which the leading landscape gardeners of Japan exhibit their work.
A great demand has grown up among the tourists who visit the land of the
cherry blossom for copies of these miniature gardens to take back with
them to America.
In response to this growing trade
demand, one of the large Japanese nurseries has opened a branch near New
York City, where one of their expert garden designers devotes his entire
time in constructing miniature gardens for the American public. These
gardens may be properly divided into two classes. The first, which
represents a Japanese garden or familiar landscape in which the landscape
and the house are the principal feature, and the dwarf trees are only secondary;
and the other type in which a very old dwarf tree is made the central feature,
with a few stones and moss-covered rocks at its base to give an impression
of its native heath. 1
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