A Japanese Touch for Your Garden (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The Japanese garden is nature on a microcosmic scale..." (more)
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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Here is a concise introduction to the practical aspects of making a Japanese garden. Whether your garden is a spacious suburban lot, an office countyard, or a tiny inner-city backyard, you will find here hundreds of creative but time-honored ways to make maximum use of the space you have.

You will learn how to lay stones and pathways and how to create intriguing sand patterns like the ones in Zen temple gardens. You will learn about Japanese lanterns, miniature pagodas, water basins, gates, and walls, and will be shown step by step how to make a bamboo lattice fence. Notes on the care of bamboo, moss, and grass are provided as are names of native North American plants and trees that can be substituted for conventional Japanese varieties. Schematic layout plans, detailed how-to explanations, and over 130 color photographs of Japanese gardens old and new give you ideas for endless variations.

Thoroughly up-to-date in its approach and based on the principle that a garden must satisfy the gardener, not a set of inflexible guidelines, this book encourages you to choose freely from the wide range of traditional Japanese design elements that suit your needs and tastes. Whether you live in the country, city, or somewhere in between, you will discover here numerous ways to transform--simply, inexpensively, and with your own two hands--that back porch, corridor, or yard into an intimate, tranquil oasis, one that will reward your planning and work with a rich and everchanging beauty.

About the Author

Kiyoshi Selke was born in Kyoto in 1918 and holds degrees from the Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. One of postwar Japan's most original and thoughtful residential designers, he was with Masanobu Kudo a chief editor of Sakutei no Jiten (Encyclopedia of Garden Making). He is currently professor emeritus at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Masanobu Kudo was born in Tokyo in 1924 and holds a degree in East Asian history from Kyoto University. He helped found the avant-garde Ohara school of flower arranging and in 1969 became the director of the Japan Ikebana Arts Association. An acknowledged expert on flowers, trees, and plants, he has contributed to numerous publications on flower arranging and Japanese gardens.

David H. Engel, who served as editorial consultant for this volume, is a prominent American landscape architect and site planner. For several years in the 1950s, he studied in Japan under Tansai Sano, the late master landscape architect of Kyoto. Now in practice with an office in New York City, Mr. Engel does both private residential and large scale commercial and public work. His designs include Heian pavilions for the headquarters of the Gulf States Paper Corporation and the Japanese garden on the Rockefeller estate, acknowledged to be the finest in the Western world. A contributor to House Beautiful and The New Yorker, Mr. Engel is also the author of Japanese Gardens for Today and a forthcoming work, China's Gardens: Ancient Roots...Modern Lessons.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha International (February 15, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 4770016611
• ISBN-13: 978-4770016614
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #31,993 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Begin With a Classic, October 10, 2000

By	EternalSeeker (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This slender book packs a big punch. It has been a how-to Japanese gardening classic for many years, and is a fine place to start. Long on good photography, not wordy, but gets right to the design philosophy behind the gardens. Especially well geared for those without a lot of space to work with. I only wish it were bigger! If you find yourself looking for more at this end of this book, may I recommend 'Japanese Gardens: Right Angle and Natural Form' by Gunter Nitschke (1993, Benedikt Taschen) for more on fabulous pictures, history and design theories.

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Japanese Touch for your Garden, August 27, 2001

By	Al Aliment (Kaneohe, HI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Using this book and lots of my time I took a boring townhouse courtyard and turned it into a mini Japanese garden of peace and tranquility. My results were so promising I expanded to the front yard and outside the courtyard fence. The book's beautiful pictures and down to earth language gave me the confidence to select and place my plants, rocks, lanterns and install a water basin plus lights for nighttime enjoyment. I'm still using the book's ideas as I build and install a wooden lattice around the garden's perimeter. (This will resemble growing bamboo, which is too large for my space) Yes you can hire someone to do your Japanese garden but why do it and miss all the trial and error that makes creating you own garden so enjoyable. Take this book home and get started. You will not go wrong.

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just what you need, August 2, 2005

By	Zack Davisson "All Good Things" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The title of this book is a bit misleading, in that it does not offer tips on adding a "Japanese touch" to your existing garden, but rather goes about explaining how to create a Japanese-style garden in the space available to you. In this manner, it is an extremely capable guide and leaves you with the confidence that you can accomplish building your own Japanese-style garden.

"A Japanese Touch for Your Garden" tells both the basic elements of a Japanese garden; rocks, plants, water, artificial elements, and also provides a blueprint for laying out and constructing a garden using these elements. Although packed with lovely pictures, the book is straight-forward and bare-boned, giving you the essentials of what you need. The authors briefly touches upon garden philosophy and such, but acknowledges that there are other, thicker books for the esoteric matters and they will focus on the practical.

The different sections of the book deal with things such as stone lanterns, bamboo fences, bridges, plants and trees...basically everything you will need. The focus is one how to select and use these available elements for the existing space you have to work with, and how to maximize them for the effect you want to achieve. The rear of the book also contains a guide of Japanese gardens in the US that you can visit, and suppliers of the various items you may want for your garden.

An excellent book, it is exactly what you need if there is a spare portion of your house or yard where you would like to put a Japanese garden. For a more deeper, spiritual look at Japanese gardens, look elsewhere. But to be inspired and begin construction on your own "World in Miniature," this is the place to start.