How to Use Japanese Garden Design for Your Home

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By Aldene Fredenburg
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Use Japanese Garden Design for Your Home

If Japanese garden design intrigues you but you’re not sure that it quite fits in with your informal décor, take heart! You can incorporate many of the principles of this ancient art, give them your own individual twist, and create a private space for yourself that has a distinctly Asian feel while reflecting your own artistic tastes.

Gardens have been an important part of exterior design in Japan for many centuries. Originally a place for contemplation and religious devotion, the traditional Japanese garden has gone through significant changes throughout the different political and religious periods in history. For many years now, the beauty and serenity of traditional Japanese gardens have been modernized and adapted for Western tastes, and an Asian touch has become a standard choice when designing both exterior and interior spaces in the United States and Europe.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Diagram of the space you plan to locate your garden
Containers for plants
Plants, trees, manmade accessories: benches, statues, lanterns, etc.
Books and magazine articles with photos of gardens and related spaces.
Your time, creativity, and imagination.

Step 1

First, decide what kind of Japanese garden you want. Do you want a minimalist rock and sand garden, a lush, riotous collection of trees, shrubs, flowers, and grasses, or something in between? Do you have the room for a walking garden, or a tiny patch of ground that you want to transform? Do you want to see your garden from your kitchen window, or your deck? Will it be a place for you to meditate? The desired effect, placement, and available space will dictate the type of garden you create.
Step 2

Draw a plan for your Japanese garden based on the shape of the space you plan to fill. Take into consideration available light, soil conditions, access to water, and so forth. (You may have to change the soil conditions by bringing in a special potting mix, or opt for containers, large and small, for your plantings. Many fine books on the subject will give you a good head start on planning your garden while offering creative inspiration; see the Resources section, below, for a list.
Step 3

To give your Japanese garden a traditional touch, be sure to include a lantern, or for a more modern adaptation, consider replacing it with a solar-powered lanterns, or a shoji lamp—or even a sculpture of the Buddha, an important symbol of enlightenment in Asian culture.
Step 4

If you can include flowing water in your design, do so. In a traditional setting, a water element should appear as naturally occurring: artificially created waterfalls, koi ponds, flowing streams are wonderful additions. Man-made elements like fountains would not occur in a traditional Japanese garden, but if you want to bend the rules, a fountain with water that flows quietly through a bamboo pipe into a small basin will allow you to honor the water element, incorporate natural materials, and add a beautiful touch to a garden even while breaking with tradition. (If you want to add a koi pond, take your climate into consideration; if you live in climate with cold seasons, your koi may need to winter someplace other than your backyard.)
Step 5

Another Japanese garden design principle is to play with the relationship between interior and exterior space, and particularly the transitional spaces in a home. If your garden is meant to be viewed from inside your home, add elements in your interior design that reflect the design of your garden to tie the two spaces together.
Step 6

If you have a larger natural element in view of your Japanese garden—a mountain, a distant lake—you’re in luck; one common practice is to use the larger, outside element as a focal point to draw the eye from the garden to the bigger world. If you don’t have that, a large, beautifully shaped tree will do. But what if you live in a city without a view to a mountain or other large natural formation? Perhaps you have an architecturally striking church or temple within your view, or a picturesque town square. Build your garden around that, as long as you enjoy the view. Traditional? Absolutely not. But it does succeed in connecting your garden to a beautiful element outside your private space, which is an important principle in garden design in Japan.
Step 7

If you follow the rules of Japanese garden design to the letter, you will have plenty of inspiration to create a beautiful, serene retreat for yourself and your friends. But if your creative instinct tells you to stray a bit from the basic principles, you can do so while remaining true to the spirit of this traditional art.