Impressions of Chinese Gardens

I have traveled to many parts of the world to study gardens, and I have always been intrigued by the different ways traditional gardens express the culture, history, and character of the places and periods in which they were created. One feature they share is a strong emphasis on organizing space, allowing a garden to become much more than a simple arrangement of plants. After visiting the beautiful new Classical Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon, my wife Irina and I became interested in traveling to China to experience some of the surviving authentic examples of classical garden design.

The Classical Chinese Garden

In China, traditional classical gardens are often described as “landscape gardens.” They were originally created and owned by high-ranking court officials as peaceful retreats from the activity and noise of urban life. Most classical Chinese gardens are located in cities and enclosed by high stone walls.

The Chinese character for “garden” is composed of four pictographic elements that represent mountains or rocks, water, buildings, and plants. Together, these components reveal the traditional Chinese understanding of what a garden should contain. A classical garden is expected to include all four elements, with plants generally considered the least important.

Water can occupy more than half of a garden's total area, often appearing as one or several ponds or lakes. Moving water, including streams and fountains, is uncommon. Aquatic plants are also generally absent because the reflections of rocks, pavilions, and half-moon bridges are considered more important. These reflections add depth and complexity to the garden's visual experience. The ponds are usually excavated artificially, with the soil removed from them being used to construct the garden's hills or “mountains.”

Traditional Western gardens often place a manor house or castle in a central and geometrically organized position, making the building the principal focus of the landscape. Classical Chinese gardens follow a very different approach. Buildings and gardens are not treated as separate elements. Inside the tall surrounding walls is an intricate network of buildings, courtyards, walls, bridges crossing ponds, small hills, weathered rocks, and passages. Gates and windows provide carefully controlled views into spaces beyond them.

Many of the courtyards contain sculptural rocks accompanied by only a few plants, perhaps a small twisted tree, a cluster of bamboo, or several patches of mondo grass. The complicated arrangement serves an important purpose: it makes the garden appear much larger than its actual dimensions because visitors are never able to see the entire garden at once.

A Constantly Changing Sequence of Spaces

As I moved through each of the six gardens we visited, every area offered a different visual and spatial experience. We might begin in a modest entrance courtyard and then pass through a gate into a much larger central space. There, a lake could occupy half of the available area, surrounded by a rocky hill topped with a small open pavilion. Zigzagging stone bridges crossed portions of the water, while a larger hall opened toward the garden on one side.

From that area, another gate might lead into a covered passage with windows along one wall. Each opening contained a carved stone screen with a different pattern. At the end of the passage, three steps descended into a smaller courtyard enclosed by tall walls on three sides. The fourth side contained a series of doors opening into a wooden hall furnished with traditional Chinese furniture.

At the center of this courtyard stood a tall, sculptural stone, accompanied by a few small green shrubs at its base. Beyond the hall, another turn and another gate could immediately reveal yet another courtyard.

This continual movement from one space into another created an ever-changing visual journey. No two courtyards were identical. Their proportions differed, and their entrances came in many forms, including rectangular openings, arabesque shapes, and moon gates. The visitor might step upward, descend a few stairs, turn a corner, or pass through another opening before discovering the next scene.

Sculptural Rocks and Garden Mountains

Many courtyards contained tall, twisted, perforated rocks that were displayed much like marble sculptures in an Italian Renaissance garden. The comparison is useful, although the Chinese approach lacks the Western emphasis on grandeur, symmetry, and expansive open views.

Among the most highly prized examples are Taihu rocks, which come from the bottom of Lake Tai near Suzhou, an area famous for its large collection of classical gardens. Certain rocks have individual names and reputations that make them almost as famous in China as celebrated Michelangelo sculptures are in the West. Some have histories stretching back centuries, including long-running disputes over ownership.

Apart from a pair of lion sculptures positioned near one entrance, these natural stones serve as the garden's primary sculptural works.

In addition to individual rocks, most gardens contain at least one artificial “mountain” constructed from similarly eroded stones. These rocky formations may contain small caves and narrow stairways leading upward to a pavilion.

The rough texture and irregular shapes of the rocks create a dramatic contrast with the calm surface of the water and the broad, smooth white walls surrounding the spaces. At times, however, I found the sheer number of rocks visually overwhelming because their abundance could reduce the impact of a single carefully displayed sculptural stone.

Craftsmanship and Materials

The craftsmanship found in these gardens is exceptional, as is the sensitivity with which different materials are combined. Modern-looking concrete, rough stucco, and ordinary hardware are almost impossible to find.

The buildings and walls are generally constructed from stone and finished in white. Their roofs feature elaborate joinery and gracefully upturned corners, along with dark gray or green glazed tiles and numerous bronze dragon decorations. Interior woodwork and furniture are made from dark brown mahogany.

Courtyards are often paved with intricate patterns created from small, rounded pebbles in different colors. These details demonstrate the remarkable skill of the artisans who created the gardens.

The resulting design language is not only visually successful but also adaptable to different scales. The same principles can work in both large and small gardens, including spaces located within the center of cities.

Seeing the Gardens Through an Artist's Eyes

Old Chinese paintings often portray an elderly philosopher sitting alone in peaceful isolation within his garden. Experiencing these gardens today is considerably less tranquil because visitors are usually numerous.

Irina and I are both artists, and our training has taught us that trying to observe everything simultaneously can make it difficult to truly see anything. Instead, we concentrate on individual details.

When Irina draws in her sketchbook, she must study one shape or feature at a time. I use a similar approach through the viewfinder of my camera, moving around, choosing a particular composition, framing it, and examining the relationships between different elements.

Even in crowded gardens, this method allowed us to disregard much of the surrounding activity and experience individual views almost as though we were the only people there.

Framing Views in the Garden

Chinese garden designers use many different methods to frame views. A sculptural stone and a cluster of bamboo might stand against a plain white wall and be viewed through a carefully positioned window. A lake, several rocks, and a small building might appear within the circular opening of a moon gate. Other scenes can be glimpsed through intricately carved stone window screens.

The entire journey through the garden is therefore a sequence of changing spaces and carefully composed scenes. Each courtyard provides a different perspective, while gates in numerous shapes encourage visitors to continue walking and discovering what lies beyond the next opening.

The Landscape of the New China

Our primary reason for traveling to China was to experience remnants of its ancient culture, including temples and classical gardens. However, our tour leaders were equally enthusiastic about what they described as the “new” China.

They spoke with considerable pride about the country's accomplishments following the economic changes of 1980, when China moved from a state-controlled economy toward free enterprise.

During a cruise through the gorges of the Yangtze River, we repeatedly heard about the nearly completed Three Gorges Dam, described at the time as the largest dam in the world. The project was preparing to flood approximately 250 miles of the river valley.

At the same time, we also heard local residents question whether the benefits of the project would justify the loss of their ancestral homes. Hundreds of historic towns and villages had been demolished before the rising reservoir waters submerged them.

Shanghai and the Rise of the Modern City

Shanghai perhaps represented the excitement surrounding the new China more clearly than anywhere else we visited. With a population of twelve million people, the city was rapidly developing enormous complexes of apartment towers, high-rise hotels, commercial buildings, and other modern structures.

Many of these buildings featured extraordinary forms and colors unlike anything we had previously encountered. Some incorporated enormous sculptural elements at their tops, including one building crowned with a giant basket and another made of green glass with tall wedge-shaped structures projecting from its sides.

From the restaurant on the eighty-sixth floor of the futuristic new Hyatt Hotel, we were able to see a spectacular nighttime panorama of modern Shanghai.

The Hyatt itself was designed as a highly stylized interpretation of a Chinese pagoda. The building was white and covered with thousands of perforated stainless-steel strips. Under powerful floodlights, these surfaces shimmered like an enormous crystal palace made of ice.

Parks and Green Spaces in Shanghai

Despite the rapid transformation of Shanghai into a modern commercial center, the government also demonstrated considerable concern for the quality of the urban environment.

The city was already experiencing predictable consequences of rapid development, including smog, expanding freeways, and increasing traffic associated with the growing ownership of private automobiles.

The municipal government had established a goal of maintaining ten percent of Shanghai as parkland, creating small green retreats throughout the city.

Some of these green areas were extremely simple. One example might consist of a narrow strip of lawn beside a busy sidewalk, bordered by a curving wall with a small grove of trees planted behind it.

Other spaces were much more extensive. Along the downtown riverfront, for example, a promenade was elevated roughly fifteen feet above street level. Miniature parks separated it from the roadway, incorporating trees, rounded shrubs with purple and pink new growth, mondo grass, and winding paths paved with pebbles.

A Freeway Garden

Our final impression of Shanghai came as we traveled along the new freeway leading toward the new airport.

For roughly fifteen to twenty miles, we saw extensive plantings occupying the twenty-foot-wide median and the thirty-foot-wide “English border” running along both sides of the highway.

From what we could determine while traveling at approximately sixty miles per hour, the planting scheme included various types of bamboo, tall junipers, boxwood trimmed into spherical forms, oleander (Nerium oleander), flowering cherries and plums (Prunus), plane trees (Platanus), Chinese windmill palms (Trachycarpus fortunei), Dracaena, clipped Photinia with red new foliage, and groups of Oxalis.

Every quarter mile or so, the combination of three or four plant types changed. The arrangement was clearly intended to be viewed from a moving vehicle. The plant combinations changed often enough to remain interesting but gradually enough that drivers could still perceive the design.

In this sense, it was genuinely a freeway garden, carefully designed for movement and changing views.

Lessons for Our Own Gardens

Our experiences in China's classical gardens offered several valuable ideas that could be applied to gardens elsewhere.

The first lesson concerns the control of space. Chinese gardens demonstrate how intimacy and privacy can be created, how unwanted views of streets and neighboring properties can be screened, and how even the smallest areas can become interesting discoveries.

The second lesson is the richness that comes from careful attention to detail. Almost everything visible within a garden contributes to the overall experience. Even an abundance of beautiful flowers on a rose bush cannot completely hide an unattractive layer of decomposing clippings beneath it or rough bark chips covering a pathway.

In Chinese gardens, this sensitivity to detail can be seen in the textures of pebble paving, the isolated presentation of a specimen tree with dramatically twisted branches, and the carefully framed views seen through windows and gates.

By controlling what the visitor sees, designers prevent the plants from blending into one indistinct mass of greenery. Contrasts also play an important role. Rough, weathered rocks placed against smooth white walls make each material more noticeable and encourage visitors to appreciate individual elements.

Chinese Gardens and Western Garden Design

Modern American garden design has borrowed heavily from several of the world's major garden traditions. These include Italian Renaissance gardens, formal French gardens, English landscape and cottage gardens, and Japanese temple gardens.

Considering China's enormous influence as a source of garden plants, it is surprising that classical Chinese garden design has had comparatively little influence on Western gardens. Apart from occasional pagodas and moon bridges, relatively few Chinese garden principles have been widely adopted.

This is particularly unexpected given that Chinese garden traditions extend back more than 2,500 years, with the classical period generally associated with the Ming Dynasty from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries.

Classical Chinese Gardens in North America

In recent years, however, several Chinese gardens have been created in North America.

Examples include the Astor Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Chinese Scholar's Garden at the Staten Island Botanical Garden in New York, and classical Chinese gardens in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Portland, Oregon.

Additional Chinese-style gardens have also been developed or were under construction in Seattle and at the Huntington Botanical Gardens near Los Angeles.

As more people become familiar with these gardens, their ideas and design principles may gradually influence the way gardens are created in America. The lessons of Chinese garden design—carefully controlled views, intimate spaces, strong contrasts, thoughtful craftsmanship, and a deliberate sequence of discoveries—offer a rich source of inspiration for gardens of many sizes and settings.