File:American homes and gardens (1908) (17968082158).jpg

Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesgar51908newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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August, 1908 AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 35 The success of the whole garden depended chiefly upon Mr. Takahashi, and his work is remarkable as a triumph of garden ingenuity. As it is impossible to bring trees of size from Japan, the large trees are of necessity native grown and pollarded to reduce their height. There are elms, oaks and maples treated in this way. Among them, artistically arranged to give the Japanese air to the whole, are scattered a great number of smaller trees—all planted in the spring—bushes and flowering plants safely imported from Japan packed in water moss. Chief among them is a wonderful "chabohibi," a variety of cedar, about ten feet high, and of a probable age of two hundred years. Other importations obtained from the Japanese nurseries of South cealed; artifice achieves marvels; and mosses and lichens are used with astonishing skill to counterfeit the appearance of age. Rejecting many of our traditions, the Japanese gar- dener in the United States has a remarkable faculty for mak- ing things grow. He scorns bone dust and all chemical fer- tilizers, and yet after a trial is willing to discard his home ways and for only fertilizer uses well-rotted horse manure. Completing this Bernardsville garden, Mr. Uyeda has re- built the entire fence to a true model of Nippon. He has carved numerous lamps, built several heavily thatched tea- houses, decorated with the good-luck scrolls called "tomoto," an elaborately carved Buddhist shrine, two boats like dug- outs, and, chief glory of the garden, a Japanese dwelling
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A Bit of Old Japan Transplanted to New Jersey Orange and Long Island are hydrangeas, weeping mul- berries, Japanese privets, and a vast array of dwarfed maples, pines, cedars, hemlocks, bush wisteria, cherries and plums. These are all kept in glazed pots and are taken into the greenhouse for the winter. Other dwarf trees are being carefully grown, curiously bent in infancy to grotesque forms, bound by strong wire-like grass, many of them trained to climb picturesque rocks of tufa. In spite of the patient genius of Japanese gardeners, who are wizards in budding and grafting, it has been found use- less to import some of the most attractive of Japanese plants. 1 he cherry, the most famous of all their trees, with its pro- fusion of delicate double blossoms, in our eastern climate within two years loses, by degeneration, nearly all of its characteristic beauty. Yet its absence is wonderfully con- house, perfect in every detail, from sliding rice-paper-covered room walls to heavy floor mats. Ornamental additions to the garden are a timber boxed well, a quaint shed housing two "jinrikishas," great storks and tortoises of bronze, conventional grotesques of granite lions on "rockery" pedestals, dogs of stone, a heavy umbrella- like iron "snow lantern," and cumbrous pagoda-shaped lamps of gray stone and glazed earthenware. In creating a Japanese garden one must be content to ac- cept a hundred compromises. Perfection is impossible, and illusion must be the ideal. For many old plants—and age is essential—the two months' journey is fatal; many others can not stand the severity of our winters; many again are too valuable to subject to rash experiment. Differences in soil, climate and methods work many transforming changes.

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