Fayan Japanese Tea House c. 1920 from Friends of Fabyan photo collection.
The purpose of a Japanese garden is to instill feelings of tranquility, humility, harmony, and respect for all of nature. Often used as quiet places for meditation, they can be designed around a tea house, dry Zen gardens with raked stones, rocks, and evergreens, or as strolling gardens with ponds large enough for boating. Most types of Japanese gardens combine Chinese influences with elements of the Japanese indigenous religion, Shinto, which believes that mountains, hills, trees, and stones house divine spirits.
Modern Japanese gardens are typically monochrome, but they were not always so. The classical Japanese garden of the 10th to 12th centuries contained cherry and plum trees in addition to pines and willows. However, the influence of Zen Buddhism and watercolor painting from Southern China transformed the colorful Japanese garden in the Middle Ages. Flowers and flowering plants came to be regarded as signs of frivolity and were replaced by evergreens to symbolize tranquility and eternity.
A Japanese garden with a tea house, such as the Fabyan Japanese Garden, is participatory, engaging guests to move over a path that leads toward a fuller appreciation of natural harmony. The 路地 “roji,” or “dewy path,” of the tea garden is designed to control the experience of the guest by leading them through the continual unfolding of new scenes and perspectives along the path.
Traditionally, tea gardens require only enough space for the winding path from a narrow outer garden into the enclosed inner garden. A waiting pavilion or bench, teahouse, touches of rock, and greenery are the main elements. Tea gardens usually include stone lanterns that light the way to the tea house, water basins for washing the hands and mouth, and steppingstones that control where visitors stop and what they view along the roji.
The calmness and subtle beauty of the natural world soothe the spirit, repress worldly cares, and prepare the visitor for the tea ceremony, which will symbolically purify the spirit. The gods of the ancient Shinto religion are nature spirits, and a Japanese garden is a place to worship nature. Japanese gardens are not just works of art, but carefully planned miniaturized compositions that celebrate nature by capturing its essence.
The Fabyan Japanese Garden’s design combined traditional as well as some non-traditional elements. The garden was designed around 1910 by Taro Otsuka, a famed Japanese landscape architect who had an office in downtown Chicago, where he designed gardens across the United States. While the Fabyans added personal elements to the garden, such as tulips, a gazing ball, and electricity to the lantern (none of which remain today), many traditional design rules were followed. The garden has been restored twice, thanks to Darlene Larson, the Geneva Garden Club, the Forest Preserve District of Kane County, and countless volunteers. Some original plants remain, and new ones were selected for their varied hues of green, textures, and low maintenance needs. The garden is primarily green but does have some flowering plants in places throughout the year.
Experience the design theory of Japanese gardens for yourself at the Fabyan Japanese Garden, open on select days from May through September.
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SOURCES:
Earle, Joe, ed. Infinite Spaces: The Art and Wisdom of the Japanese Garden. Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 2000.
Horton, Alvin. Creating Japanese Gardens. Des Moines, IA: Ortho Books, 1989.
Oster, Maggie. Reflections of the Spirit: Japanese Gardens in America. New York: Dutton Studio Books, 1993.
Takei, Jirō and Marc P. Keane. Sakuteiki: Visions of the Japanese Garden. Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 2001.