Customer Reviews

Infinite Spaces: The Art and Wisdom of the Japanese Garden

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I like the beautiful photos of the Japanese gardens shown in this book. For further and in depth study of Sakuteiki, I recommend the translation work of Jiro Takei & Marc P. Keane (Sakuteiki - Visions of the Japanese Garden).

For other books on Japanese gardens, I recommend books by Marc P Keane (Japanese Garden Design), David and Michiko Young (The Art of the Japanese Garden), Geeta K Mehta and Kimie Tada (Japanese gardens - Tranquility, Simplicity and Harmony).

I own a number of Japanese Gardening books, since I'm a landscape designer, and this is one that really helped me understand the macro concepts involved in Japanese Garden Design.

The book is basically a series of well-thought-out and well-chosen quotes about Japanese Gardening, the philosophy, and how to do it, interspersed with gorgeous color photos of large-scale Japanese Gardens. I love the layout of the book and the way you can read and digest the book over a few days without getting bogged down in excess detail or too much text. The photos accompany the text well.

It's not my favorite book on Japanese Gardening (get Serene Gardens for that) just because the photos are of such large gardens. I design home gardens, not giant estates, so while I could be inspired by the general concepts, there weren't concrete ideas I could take from it - few pathways, gates, fences, privacy screens, small-space plantings, etc.

If you want to learn the philosophy behind Japanese Gardening in a fun and easy way while getting inspired by gorgeous photos, then this is a great book. If you're looking for concrete instruction or photographs that you can pull ideas from for your home garden, look elsewhere.

This is such a beautiful book. I look forward to using some of the ideas to build my Japanese garden.