A maple tree and a wall constructed of stacked clay roof tiles create a subtle and compelling vignette perhaps meant to reference classical gardens’ prominent use of water.
Plasma Studio, BIAD, GroundLab, LAUR Studio, Beijing Forestry University, John Martin and Associates, Arup. • 91 acres (37 hectares) • 2011
FAMOUS CLASSICAL CHINESE GARDENS , such as the Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou, established in 1509, and the Yuyuan garden in Shanghai, first established in 1368, have served as the best examples of garden design for centuries. Today, new attempts at honoring tradition are often displayed in tidy and nostalgic theme parks such as this, a horticultural amusement that benefits from proximity to the world-famous necropolis of the Qin Shi Huang Di Terra-Cotta Warriors and Horses Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was designed for a 2011 landscape exposition, and is now a permanent public garden that promises a visual history of Chinese garden styles.
Modernization and its consequent by-product of leisure time have produced highly controlled environments for entertainment around the world. Many public gardens are in danger of becoming amusement parks with plants. But—and there is always a but—even in the most controlled display, a visitor with an open heart cannot escape the beauty of dancing willows, the fragrance of the Chinese fringe tree (Chionanthus retusus ), the delicacy of the epaulette tree (Pterostyrax corymbosus ), or the butter-yellow thickets of Japanese rose (Kerria japonica) . Despite our most misled intentions, beauty shines through.
In Xi’an, vignettes from traditional gardens have been designed alongside modern courtyards and contemporary landscapes. Modern sculpture is bordered by traditional bamboo fencing, concrete replaces stone, and steel replaces the beam-and-bracket wooden construction of a pagoda.
The Chinese fringe tree (Chionanthus retusus ) grows to a height of 20 feet (6 meters) and features sweetly fragrant flowers.
Water Loong , by Jin Ren, can be seen from most areas of the garden by virtue of its size and eye-catching finish.
By far the happiest example of a reinterpreted ancient feature is a towering sculpture of a water dragon, Water Loong by Jin Ren. Set so it can be viewed from many angles, in one corner of a large pond filled with lotus and edged with reeds and grasses, the silver-bright sculpture swoops and swirls over its own reflection and into the sky. Its massive form frames a more conventional and traditional statue of the Peony Fairy from one angle; from another, it towers over lines of Chinese weeping willow (Salix babylonica var. pekinensis ‘Pendula’).
Traditional gardens, each with a modern twist, line a central path. Customary architecture provides the framework for the Chinese white pine (Pinus armandii ), wisteria (Wisteria sinensis ), and the fluff of willow seed on a spring day. Outlying areas are designed in large, geometric blocks of red and yellow flowers. Trees are planted in perfectly arranged battalions like living green warriors. There is also a fun fair, a concert hall, and a number of noodle shops.
It is to be hoped that with President Xi Jinping’s May 2017 announcement of China’s trillion-dollar investment in the world’s largest infrastructure project, some will be devoted to green and growing things. It may be a plaintive plea, but it could be the beginning of a green revolution. Meanwhile, the grass laughs, the birds make their nests, and brides are photographed under cherry blossoms.
Inside one glass house, elements of classical Chinese gardens such as a waterfall and rocks with intriguing shapes add interest to a display of flora from the tropics.
Shanghai Municipal People’s Government, Chinese Academy of Sciences, State Forestry Administration, Valentien + Valentien Landschaftsarchitekten • 509 acres (206 hectares) • 2010
“HEAD OF THE NINE PEAKS IN THE CLOUDS” is the poetic name for a rise of small hills in the Yangtze River delta near Shanghai, and the site of a botanical garden that combines traditional Chinese and contemporary European landscape architecture. German firm Valentien + Valentien won a worldwide competition to design the garden by creating a series of landscaped gardens, an institution devoted to scientific research, and a place of horticultural leisure. “Chinese garden design is the representation of landscapes, of ideal landscapes; in the end it is a form of landscape painting.”
Creating a new, coherent botanical garden in the country that plant hunter E. H. Wilson (1876–1930) called the “Mother of Gardens” is no small assignment. With over 31,000 native plant species, China is the source of many of the home gardener’s favorite ornamental plants. About half the species of the world’s rhododendrons are native to China. As are 50 percent of peonies, 75 percent of maples, 75 percent of daylilies, 50 percent of dogwoods, and 45 percent of magnolias. It is where the parents of many of today’s roses come from. It is where oranges, mandarins, and lemons originated. Modern-day plant explorers continue to find new species every year.
With a current population of almost 1.5 billion and one of the world’s fastest growing economies, pressure on the endemic flora of China is great. The role of its botanic gardens to teach conservation, conduct research, and give people who live in megacities a place to simply enjoy nature is of the utmost importance. They recognize this, and accordingly botanic gardens in China are springing up at a pace that almost matches development. In the past 100 years, 200 botanic gardens have been created, most since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. Shanghai, with a population of 18 million, is in desperate need of green space. The Chenshan garden offers this even while its immediate surroundings continue to be developed for industry and housing. Creator Christoph Valentien says, “With the botanic garden, we are creating a sustainable park and a groundbreaking example of garden design that is orientated toward a policy of ecology, and is thus a new artificial landscape with integrative architecture. Our landscape as a reflection of the world should contribute to the knowledge about the world as an ecosystem, and to a sustainable way of dealing with it.”
The Chinese symbol for garden 
denotes an enclosed space containing mountains, water, and plants. Enclosed by thousands of ornamental cherries (Prunus
spp.), ginkgo tree (Ginkgo biloba
), and scholar trees (Styphnolobium japonicum
; syn. Sophora japonica
), the Chenshan garden fulfills its namesake duty.
From Chenshan Hill the viewer looks down upon the former quarry and a series of lakes that refresh the garden.
The garden fulfills a dual mission of protecting a collection of botanically significant plants and drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors with displays that entertain.
Everything about the scale and design of this garden is meant to impress. It is built on top of a granite hill that rises to about 330 feet (100 meters). A circular grade—a ring—surrounds the inner garden and the hill, introducing a use of geometry that makes the pure, almost austere shape of the entire property pleasing to navigate and easy to comprehend. At the center, a large lake with bisecting canals divides the garden into an astounding thirty-five individual theme gardens.
The theme gardens are raised above the poor, loose, sedimentary, salty, water-logged native soil to promote better plant growth and achieve a pronounced visual impact. Because the landscape architecture is so coherent, the different gardens connect in a graceful way. Bridges, curving walls, and flowing pathways guide the visitor smoothly even between areas with vastly different focuses.
Wisteria sinensis , one of the country’s most famous exports, blooms below a scenic pagoda on nearby Chenshan Hill.
Certainly the most dramatic topography in these gardens is a former quarry that plunges via a steep cliff with a 100-foot (30-meter) drop to a pool below. The geometric weave of the whole garden is visible from the pagoda hovering serenely above.
Three glass conservatories shaped like modernist silver carp lie to the northeast of the main garden. Jungles, deserts, and subtropical tenderness are exhibited under their lattice of protective aluminum. Unburdened by any latent cultural bias objecting to the teaching of evolution, a large section in one is devoted entirely to the topic—complete with tree ferns guarded by an animatronic dinosaur. It’s kitsch, but children flock to it.
For the true plant connoisseur, there is plenty. In the arid house, there’s a tall crested form of saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea f. cristata )—a wonderful fan-shaped monstrosity. In another house, tall palms. And in another, carnivorous plants and some of the 1,000 species of orchids native to China.
Lakes bordered by broad, curving paths and bisected by undulating bridges provide contemplative green space just outside the city of nearly 18 million inhabitants. This photo, taken early in the morning before the garden opened, reveals the grounds in a rare, empty state.
The Buddha’s light tree (Neolitsea sericea ) features remarkable foliage; these young leaves of soft pinkish red will gradually mature to match their green relatives below while the immature green berries eventually ripen over the course of a full year into a vibrant red.
The peony, the national flower, is duly represented by hundreds of herbaceous and tree varieties that flower in April and May. The garden-maze trope, usually created in boxwood or yew, is hedged here with Paeonia lactiflora .
In the northwest corner of the park, a research building is surrounded by a research garden, a “lively mediator between the world of science and the depiction of the plant world in the botanic garden.”
The best of the garden is, however, not the themed gardens, the glass houses, or the science center, but the long pathways bordered by trees and shrubs from around the world. Since the trees are still young, there is plenty of light. It is also quiet. Both make the garden a much sought-after venue in crowded Shanghai. To soothe the soul there are willows in water, eucalyptus on a hill, redwoods in a grove, and even one small stand of the rare Buddha’s light tree (Neolitsea sericea ) that is native to Japan, Korea, and China’s eastern coasts. In spring, its young leaves are golden brown, covered with soft, silky hairs that literally seem to glow in the light of the morning sun. The oils and wax in the leaves and berries have been used to make candles. This may be the reason for its common name.
The Chenshan Botanic Garden is one small part of China’s movement toward a greener world. It is a counterpoint and an accompaniment to the country’s rapacious urbanization. As goes China, in this case, we can hope, so goes the world.
Tokyo is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, so even a small piece of green open space immediately stands out.
Dar Nippon Printing Company, SWA Group, Kume Sekkei, Sumitomo Forestry, Taisei Corporation • 8 acres (3.2 hectares) • 2012
JAPAN IS UNDERGOING an inspiring horticultural and cultural revolution. This project, called a forest but really more of an urban woodland, is making a considerable impression in a country with an allegiance to formal and traditional ornament, and is meant to influence the way people think about the use of urban space.
The greater Tokyo metropolitan area has a population estimated to hover near 36 million. The city itself contains almost 14 million. Sometimes it seems the entire population rides the same subway train. Tokyo has the second-largest urban sprawl in the world, recently overtaken by China’s Pearl River Delta. It is a competition where no one wins.
Tokyo is not a city lush with parks, despite the famous Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden and Mizumoto Park. Just over 3 percent of land is considered green space—compare that to London, which comes in at almost 40 percent. Yet the Japanese have an almost sacred appreciation of nature. In a city of such confined space, this is not readily apparent, although street trees are squeezed in between the tower blocks, the black noodles of electrical lines, and the swoop of elevated highways.
Shinto, the state religion until the end of the Second World War, continues to be influential, and its reverence for the animism of trees, rocks, and springs is a deeply entrenched part of the culture. It is not just nature that receives the blessing of a kami (god). Near the Tokyo Stock Exchange, a small shrine, Kabuto, is the place of the god Ukano-mitamano-mikoto, the guardian of the securities industry. One religion meets another.
The contemporary rooftop garden features sinuous, low terraces that are immediately prominent both in color and form against the Tokyo skyline.
Despite the large population and the density of buildings, there is an order to city life that is distinctly Japanese. Littering is accidental, personal space is respected, and the cacophony of life has a formality about it unknown in other bustling conurbations. Bushido , the disciplined way of the warrior, seems to have permeated the code of the office worker and the sales assistant.
In the midst of this, we have the Ichigaya Forest, which surrounds the corporate headquarters of Dai Nippon Printing Company. It is being implemented in three phases: phase 1 was designed in 2007, and construction and planting began in 2012. Planting of phase 2 was completed in 2015. It is scheduled to be complete by 2020. Over half the area is planted with native trees, shrubs, and ground covers. And phase 3 will require removal of old buildings; adding “native” soil, Kanto loam; stormwater management that keeps all rainfall on site; and, finally, establishing the remainder of the forest.
Currently, there are two principal features on the property: the woodland, accessible to the public and DNP’s 10,000 employees, and a curvaceous rooftop garden for executives and clients. The forest feels radically rural, the rooftop garden, highly stylized.
Tokyo’s temperature has risen considerably in the past fifty years. Dangerous man-made climate change is having a profound effect on the city, because of atmospheric pollution, lack of greenery to absorb sunlight and mitigate the heat island effect, and reduced air movement caused by the mass of so many tall buildings in close quarters. Plans are under way to create more urban forests, carefully placing them at strategic points throughout. Other quasi-extreme plans are also being discussed, notably the removal of some buildings to create airways that will enable cooling breezes from Tokyo Bay to aid in reducing the temperature. With adjacent office space built skyward as well as underground, the Ichigaya Forest is an experimental environmental model for cities around the world.
What is immediately striking about this metropolitan forest is that it is not manicured. There are no white-gloved gardeners plucking leaves from the moss as soon as they fall. It is messily alive with the energy of wild growing things. Indeed, the forest moniker communicates the intent to create a wildness, a barely controlled natural environment. It could not be farther from a Zen garden in the traditional or modern sense. There is no minimalism here. Leaf litter is allowed to accumulate, adding to the richness and moisture-retention capabilities of the soil. Rustic wattle is used to retain the new berms and to help create a microtopography that will control water flow and provide diverse habitats for plants. Gangly pyramids of stakes hold the trees until they are established. It is so un-Japanese.
Out of 7,000 species of plants known to be growing currently in Japan, about 40 percent are native. This new forest showcases key specimens of some of Japan’s finest plants. The woodland, as in nature, is planted in layers. Castanopsis sieboldii , the Itajii chinkapin, is a large, evergreen, subtropical tree dominant in the hilly areas of western Japan and is one of the tallest trees in the forest. A number of oak species, both evergreen and deciduous, add to the top layer. The blue oak, Quercus glauca , native to southern Japan, is glorious in spring, with its deep crimson new leaves.
The woodland grows unfettered, emphasizing the plants’ health and vitality. The design and maintenance are in stark contrast to many Japanese garden traditions.
Smaller trees, such as the Himalayan spindle tree, Euonymus hamiltonianus , and the Japanese maple, Acer palmatum , both with bright fall foliage, provide the next layer. Below that, there are many shrubs, notably tea of heaven, Hydrangea serrata , its blue and pink flowers lasting from summer into fall, and Fatsia japonica , the paper plant, with spirals of glossy, eight-lobed, fat-fingered, evergreen leaves.
A forest floor is never bare, and that is true of Ichigaya as well. Lilyturf, Liriope spicata , a grassy understory plant, is widely used in ornamental horticulture. It covers this forest floor. Pollia japonica is not as common in gardens, but it’s a fine spreading shade plant with white flowers in summer and blue berries in fall. No woodland is complete without ferns, and Japan is home to a number of handsome species. One of the toughest yet most alluring is the upside-down fern, Arachnoides standishii , with evergreen, lacy, arching fronds that prefer to display their veins and spore structures (sori) on the upper side of the frond, hence the name.
The relief of these trees, a quiet grove tucked into a corporate canyon, reaches out to everyone who passes, softening the walls of concrete that separate. Nature has not been defeated, but has returned.
Sculpted mounds in the Earth Garden frame the foreground in a view to the Hidaka Mountains.
Fumiaki Takano, Dan Pearson • 988 acres (400 hectares) • 2002–present
IT’S DIFFICULT TO OVERSTATE how different the northernmost Japanese landmass, Hokkaido, is from the swelter of Tokyo. In November, wind and snow come through a gap in the Hidaka Mountains near Mount Tokachi, dropping the temperature to an occasional negative 13°F (−10°C). It may stay cold and snow-covered until early April. The Hokkaido brown bear, higuma , hibernating in the mountains, doesn’t wake until spring is established. Then, Trillium camschatcense and the rare Trillium tschonoskii bloom, and they and woodland anemones fill the forest floor. Spreading bamboo grass, Sasa veitchii , begins to cover the ground and, unless managed, will shade out many of the spring and summer flowering ephemerals. The trees, the robust Mongolian oak, Quercus mongolica subsp. crispula, enormous specimens of Japanese beech, Fagus crenata , and the smaller, white-flowered Kobushi magnolia, Magnolia kobus var. borealis , come into leaf.
All but remnants of this original forest were sadly cut down long ago. Land was cleared and crops planted. On the hillsides, straight lines of larch, Larix kaempferi , planted for telephone poles and lumber, stripe their way across the landscape in waves contrary to the topography of the mountains.
Summer is warm, with long days. Grasses flower with languid grace. The 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) lily Cardiocrinum cordatum var. glehnii, with tubular, light green flowers, and the 4-foot-wide (1.2-meter-wide) umbrellas of the giant butterbur, Petasites japonicus var. giganteus , shade the sweet streams and sparkling bogs. Autumn brings red and gold maples, while the 10-foot-high (3-meter-high) white umbels of Ezo nyuu , bear’s angelica (Angelica ursina) , turn to seed. Within a month, there is likely to be snow again.
Sasa veitchii , a robust bamboo grass, grows 3 to 5 feet (0.9 to 1.5 meters). It can be kept shorter by cutting it to the ground in early spring.
The Tokachi Millennium Forest is the dream of one person, Mitsushige Hayashi, who acquired the land to protect it against development and to mitigate the carbon footprint created by his own newspaper business, Tokachi Mainichi. His vision is one of a thousand-year sustainability, hence the name. Planning for such a timespan might sound overly ambitious, but put in the context of the life of an old-growth forest, it is of course brief. Hayashi purchased the land with a view to keeping it safe and restoring and expanding the forest. Achieving that goal requires educating visitors about the flora and fauna of Hokkaido, and from that was born the idea of making it a public garden. Dan Pearson, the famous London-based garden designer, worked with local landscape designer Fumiaki Takano to develop a masterplan that encompasses two main areas, an Earth Garden and a Meadow Garden.
In the autumn sun, the Japanese native Sanguisorba hakusanensis glows hot pink while the formerly green stalks of feather reed grass, Calamagrostis ×acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, begin to fade to brown.
Artificially constructed landscapes—that is, gardens—often serve as a bridge between us and what we think of as truly untamed nature. Our world has become so urbanized that even the level of “wild” still present on this highly cultivated island now alarms us. To brace ourselves to experience it, we require, like a child on the first day of school, a gentle introduction. The Earth Garden fulfills this purpose. It is a series of rolling green waves that echo the shape of the foothills and the mountains beyond. Pearson’s work is often subtle, and this is no exception. In the midday light, the ground swells can be hard to discern, flattened by the bright sunlight as they are. But with the late afternoon comes long shadows, and the contours begin to emerge more distinctly from the mown grass. It is then, at the dimming of the day, that the landform is pronounced.
The larch boardwalk divides the haze of flowers in the Meadow Garden and leads to the restaurant and farm buildings.
Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Atrosanguinea’, although native to inland Asia, is used here in a way that recalls an English border.
By ironic contrast, the Meadow Garden, which sounds wilder by name, actually feels even more constructed than the Earth Garden. It leads to a cafe, a farmyard complete with goats, an orchard and, somewhat surprisingly, a rose garden. The phenomenon of formal rose gardens in contemporary landscapes is one best not discussed in polite company—it’s assumed to be a draw for more traditionally minded visitors, and yet so often disappoints.
The Meadow Garden might better be described as a vast perennial garden since its aim appears as much to introduce visitors to that style of herbaceous plant gardening rather than re-create the look of a native meadow. Divided into two large borders by a wide, curving path made of larch planks, one side is loud with color while the other is cooler and quieter. It is clear that the basis of design comes from the traditional English herbaceous border, with a twist from the Dutch and American prairie-garden movements. To Western eyes, the style is familiar. To the Japanese, it is a novelty.
Ornamental grasses provide the fabric that binds the plantings together. Columns of feather reed grass, Calamagrostis ×acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, weave through the border and provide a vertical foil for fluffy pink droops of Sanguisorba hakusanensis , a Japanese native, and the dark red spikes of Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Atrosanguinea’.
On the other side of the path, Japanese forest grass, Hakonechloa macra , shows off its inherent grace and elegance when used in mass plantings reminiscent of waves in the ocean. Growing well in sun and shade, the rich green color is perfect against the native lily, Lilium auratum , with large, gold-banded white flowers. It is a simple and successful arrangement. There are many more, each combination interlocking in a way that animates the space and points to the desire to create a grand scheme. It performs well as a garden-cum-public-space even if its focus is not on creating a strong sense of place.
Midori Shintani, the head gardener, continues to adjust the combinations, ensuring that balance is maintained and that adventurous plants stay within their boundaries. That is part of her and her staff’s responsibility; the other is to educate, to explain, and to translate the language of foreign plant combinations for the Japanese gardening public.
The design generates an uncomfortable association between East and West—the question is whether this is, in the end, intentional. The Meadow Garden feels as though a piece of Sussex, England, has been plopped, fully grown, on the landscape to attract horticultural tourism. The other part, the Earth Garden, has an almost intangibly sublime quality about it that relates well to Zen traditions. In an increasingly international and homogenous world, what exactly constitutes a proper or authentic sense of place?
