What May Be Done with Water and Rocks in a Little Garden

We have to acknowledge our indebtedness to the Japanese for more inspiration in matters of art and architecture than most of us can realize, and in no department of art is the realization of subtle beauty that lies in simple and unobtrusive things more valuable to us as home makers than the suggestions they give us as to the arrangement of our gardens. With our national impulsiveness, we are too apt to go a step beyond the inspiration and attempt direct imitation, which is a pity, because the inevitable failure that must necessarily attend such mistaken efforts will do more than anything else to discourage people with the idea of trying to have a Japanese garden. But if we once get the idea into our heads that the secret of the whole thing lies in the exquisite sense of proportion that enables a Japanese to produce the effect of a whole landscape within the compass of a small yard, there is some hope of our being able to do the same thing in our own country and in our own way.

Our idea of a garden usually includes a profusion of flowers and ambitious-looking shrubs, but the Japanese is less obvious. He loves flowers and has many of them, but the typical Japanese garden is made up chiefly of stones, ferns, dwarf trees and above all water. It may be only a little water,—a tiny, trickling stream not so large as that which would flow from a small garden hose. But, given this little stream, the Japanese gardener,—or the American gardener who once grasps the Japanese idea,—can do wonders. He can take that little stream, which represents an amount of water costing at the outside about three dollars a month, and can so direct it that it pours over piles of rocks in tiny cascades, forming pool after pool, and finally shaping its course through a miniature river into a clear little lake. If it is a strictly Japanese garden, both river and lake will be bridged and the stream will have as many windings as possible, to give a chance for a number of bridges. Also it will have temple lanterns of stone, bronze storks and perhaps a tiny image of Buddha.

But in the American garden we need none of these things, unless indeed we have space enough so that a portion of the grounds maybe devoted to a genuine Japanese garden like the one shown in the illustrations. This indeed might have been picked up in Japan and transplanted bodily to America, for it is the garden of Mr. John S. Bradstreet, of Minneapolis, who is a lover of all things Japanese and has been in Japan many times. This garden occupies a space little more than one hundred feet in diameter, and yet the two-illustrations we give are only glimpses of its varied charm. They are chosen chiefly because they illustrate the use that can be made of a small stream of water so placed that it trickles over a pile of rocks. The effect produced is that of a mountain glen, and so perfect are the proportions and so harmonious the arrangement that there is no sense of incongruity in the fact that the whole thing is on such a small scale.

Where people have only a small garden, say in the back yard of a city home or in some nook that can be spared from the front lawn, an experiment with the possibilities of rocks, ferns and a small stream of water would bring rich returns. We need no temple lanterns or images of Buddha in this country, but we do need the kind of garden that brings to our minds the recollection of mountain brooks, wooded ravines and still lakes, and while it takes much thought, care and training of one’s power of observation and adjustment to get it, the question of space is not one that has to be considered, and the expense is almost nothing at all.

The thing to be most avoided is imitation either of the Japanese models from which we take the suggestion for our own little gardens or of the scenery of which they are intended to remind us. It is safest to regard such gardens merely as an endeavor on our part to create something that will call into life the emotion or memory we wish to perpetuate.

All these suggestions are for a small garden such as would naturally belong to a city or suburban house, but if such effects can be produced here in a corner and by artificial means, it is easy to imagine what could be done with large and naturally irregular grounds, say on a hillside, or where a natural brook wound its way through the garden, giving every opportunity for the picturesque effects that could be created by very simple treatment of the banks, by a bridge or a pool here and there and by a little adjustment of the rocks lying; around.