The Japanese Gardens

Elements

For first visitors to the website, this section is an expanded and enriched version of the older section on the individual elements of Japanese gardens. Just as there is no such thing as a typical Japanese garden, no single element is a required or expected component of a Japanese garden. It must also be remembered that gardens are always a work in progress, never a finished production, so that the individual elements one encounters today may not have been part of the original design, and may not be in the future. All we intend to do with this part of the web site is to offer the user a wide variety of photographs taken over the course of the last two decades and featuring primarily the historically significant gardens of Kyoto and Nara. We make no claims for the aesthetic superiority of any one feature, or for its applicability to modern garden design, but we do hope that it provides the visitor with a sense of the beauty and variety of Japanese gardens. [Not all of the gardens represented in this section are covered in that part of the website that deals extensively with individual gardens, but if the caption below a detail has a clickable link, it will take you to that section and its more extensive coverage of the garden.]

(choose an element)
architecture borrowed scenery bridges islands laterns and basins
paths ponds and shorelines sand and pebbles shrubs and flowers stones
streams trees waterfalls