To create a back yard Japanese garden, Henri Bort–gardener of Sansho-En, the Japanese garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe–suggests starting small. Bort says people often come to Sansho-En, the Garden of Three Islands, to take pictures of areas they would like to re-create at home. A beginning garden plot could include several of the traditional natural and man-made elements of these serene landscapes that express man`s oneness with nature.
Bort says the setting can then be changed throughout the year by setting out pots of seasonal flowers, but for a Japanese garden the colors should be subdued. ”We work with hues of pink here,” Bort says. ”Red is a no-no because it`s too harsh.”
He suggests including a boulder as part of the garden landscape. It could be selected for the natural beauty of its jagged edges or its curved contours. ”Boulders are considered the skeletons of the earth, and you should try to bring plants in close to them so they take on the shape of the boulder,” says Bort. He says plant materials could include bush clover or thyme.
Bort suggests adding one of the man-made objects that, in Japanese gardens, are often functional as well as decorative. A stone water basin is used for symbolic purification. Bort says water can come from a garden hose set up to drip down through a bamboo spout. ”It should be just a droplet so it pools out naturally like a raindrop in the water,” he says. Another choice might be a stone lantern, which could be lighted in the evenings.
Another important element would be a Scotch or mugho pine. Because it would be pruned and trained to flow with the lines of the site selected, Bort says, ”you might be able to get a distorted or damaged one from a nursery at a bargain price.”
The tree must then be pruned, shaped and trained to make it look older and to adapt it to the surroundings. ”We think of a tree as a wheel, and we don`t want branches one over the other,” says Bort in explaining the esthetic considerations for removing branches. ”To get the right effect, it should be almost a whorl.”
The number of branches removed depends on where the tree is located. ”In some areas we want them fuller, in others we want to create perspective,”
Bort says.
The branches are then tied with either dark sash cord or dacron line, which is anchored into the ground with a duckbill anchor. ”The tree should conform to the landscape,” says Bort. ”On a slope, branches will angle downward; on a plain, they will be straight.”
The lines themselves should not come straight down to the ground but be strung at angles to create a spider web effect. Bort uses whole- and half-hitch knots to tie the branches so the lines can be tightened progressively. It can take three to five years to train a tree, depending on its size and age.
Bort says, ”People come out here and take measurements of everything;
they tie their lines and then they come back, or they leave word for me to call them at home anytime. Then I know they`re in trouble.”
He cautions people trying to train pines, ”You have to gradually take a limb down until you hear a soft creak and you know you`ve gone far enough.”
Continue on beyond the creaking sound and next will come the heartwrenching cracking of a branch breaking off. ”You can`t turn the tree around when you`ve lost a branch,” Bort says, ”so you just have to work with nature to reshape the tree, and sometimes you just have to sacrifice it.”
Although the library at the Botanic Garden has many books on the techniques of Japanese gardening, the only way to really learn the art is to practice it. ”You need the head and the back,” Bort says.
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Bort will offer a workshop on Japanese gardening techniques, including creating and maintaining moss and dry gardens and pruning trees and shrubs, on from 9 a.m. to noon March 21 at the Botanic Garden. The fee for Botanic Garden members is $9 and for nonmembers, $12.
Other special classes, lectures and activities featuring Japanese gardens and gardening, ink painting, flower arranging and a tea ceremony will be held from January through April at the Chicago Botanic Garden, on Lake-Cook Road about a mile east of the Edens Expressway, Glencoe. For further information, call 835-5440.