Gardeners’ Federation Celebrates 55th Anniversary
SCGF looks to passing on heritage and skills of Japanese gardeners
Date: 22/11/2010
Source: Rafu (Ryoko Ohnishi)
The Southern California Gardeners’ Federation (SCGF) celebrated their 55th anniversary last weekend. A total of 230 people gathered for the banquet on Saturday at the Kyoto Grand Hotel in Little Tokyo. The anniversary was celebrated in conjunction with the 12th convention of the Pacific Coast Landscape Gardeners’ Alliance that brought 20 members from the Vancouver Japanese Gardeners’ Association.
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| Shinkichi Koyama and Brian Yamasaki present historic photos during the Southern California Gardeners’ Federation banquet held on Nov. 13 in Little Tokyo. (RYOKO OHNISHI/Rafu Shimpo) |
Derek Furukawa, banquet emcee, said, “Today, most of the members have matured and the committee is getting smaller and smaller. Why do we still do this? I’ve learned a lot from the federation and the members, a sense of community and volunteerism. It is not about ‘me’ but about ‘we.’ That’s why we continue this.”
Guest speaker, Dr. Takeo Uesugi, emeritus professor at Cal Poly Pomona, College of Environmental Design, emphasized the strength of Japanese gardeners and the beauty of the Japanese gardens, which persists despite current and past times of economic hardship.
Uesugi noted that the natural beauty and integrated simplicity would make Japanese gardens survive and endure. In addition, a Japanese garden can be created by using local materials, landscape, people and history.
“Gardening is a profession that deals with nature, operates on a trust basis, and has a low overhead cost. I have been investigating the possibility of establishing a non-profit organization where both gardeners in Japan and SCGG can work together. I would like to ask your support on the occasion of the 55th anniversary,” said Uesugi.
Valuing those Japanese gardeners and Japanese gardens, Uesugi concluded that educational opportunities for the next generation will be secured by networking internationally.
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| A Japanese garden, created by internees at Manzanar during World War II. Merritt park, named after Ralph Merritt, the camp director, was designed by Kuichiro Nishi. (Courtesy of SCGF) |
SCGF was formed in 1955 to fight against the anti-immigrant Maloney Bill that was proposed to the State Assembly (AB1671) and required gardeners to have a state license. This bill would have excluded Japanese immigrants who had limited proficiency in English. The formation of the SCGF successfully resulted in turning down the Bill the following year. In 1986, a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers was also introduced, and the Los Angeles City Council also voted against the prohibition of the blower.
A slideshow that was presented during the banquet showed various historical moments of the group. For example, photographs of the Japanese gardens, which were created in the concentration camps during World War II, and also various activities of the SCGF such as a group picture of the establishment; construction of the James Irvine Japanese Garden at Japanese American Community & Cultural Center; equipment and plant sales; and the bonsai, photo club and friendship societies.
In the last slide, the last poem written by Shoji Nagumo (1890-1976), one of the legendary leaders of the group, was introduced.
Shuno niwa no ochiba kakimashi tsugino yo mo (I will be happy to sweep the leaves of the God’s garden/the nature that God created, even in my next life/the future generation, after I die)
A five-foot-tall flower arrangement using Chrysanthemum flowers titled “Iwaibana (celebration)” by Yokou (Kaz) Kitajima of Sogetsu School of Ikebana was displayed and welcomed the guests at the entrance.
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| ED HILLE / Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer |
Date: 05/11/2010
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer (Virginia A. Smith)
Charlie Dagit knows he'll never quite capture the eccentric serenity of Eastern design. It's Gladwyne, after all. But there's such joy in trying.
As a veteran European traveler, Charlie Dagit has toured every kind of sacred space there is in that part of the world.
But in 1992, when he visited the gardens of Kyoto and other Japanese cities, he experienced something deeper than anything he'd ever felt in a cathedral or mosque.
"There was a spirit of sacredness and serenity and oneness with nature," he says.
Adds Alice Dagit, who accompanied her architect husband on that inspiring trip, "It captured your heart and soul."
So perhaps it's not surprising that Dagit tears up when he speaks about the gardens he saw so long ago. One in particular, outside Kyoto.
It was a mere sliver visible through a slit of a window. But beyond the window was a miniature universe - a gentle alpine stream, rocks arranged just so, a place of wholeness that unified and lifted up its parts.
The window was placed as carefully as the rocks, the view's effect on these unsuspecting tourists surprisingly, but purposefully, moving.
"They get it," Dagit says of the unknown designers of this unforgettable garden, which he learned about from architecture students and has never found in a guidebook.
"Getting" Japanese design is a complicated proposition, given that there is no single Japanese garden style and that American sensibilities, particularly on the East Coast, are far more attuned to the color, fullness, and symmetry of European design.
"One of the stereotypes of Japanese gardens is that there is only one kind. Actually, there's a lot of complexity," says Harriet A. Henderson, an architect and landscape architect in Unionville, Chester County, who designs Japanese gardens and frequently lectures about them.
Dagit, 67, is a self-taught gardener who studied architecture with Louis I. Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s. Now a consultant, he formerly had his own firm, specializing in higher education.
Alice Dagit, 65, does public relations and fund-raising for nonprofits, primarily Stop Child Abuse Now, or SCAN. The couple have two sons and four grandsons.
Since their Asian adventure almost two decades ago, Dagit has been studying Japanese garden design on his own, using now-well-worn books bought in a Kyoto gift shop. Almost daily, he reads the text and examines the photographs, trying to absorb the fundamentals of an ancient genre infused with symbolism, subtlety, and simplicity.
He has also been creating a Japanese-style garden behind the house he calls "a white piece of sculpture," which he designed and helped build on a steep hillside in Gladwyne back in the '70s.
The house took a decade. The garden is a never-ending project that would frustrate most folks. But Dagit seems at peace with the incremental nature of his task. "They'll have to carry me out of here," he says.
There are many joys in this garden.
Dagit eagerly notes how sunlight hits the rocks at different times of day, in every season. He discovered most of these rocks "on the site," as he so architecturally puts it, hauling each to its assigned spot and arranging them vertically or horizontally, individually or in groupings, in very deliberate fashion.
Traditionally, rocks have been used in Japanese gardens to symbolize islands and mountains. They're so important to design, Henderson says, "that when a new garden is constructed, they are placed first. They set the scale of everything else."
Dagit admires their solidity and texture, which are also characteristics of the water basins and curved bridges he cast in concrete, and the stone bench he built. He likes to sit here, to look and think in solitude, surrounded by massive beech and hickory trees, and a couple of 150-year-old oaks.
From the road below, and almost any other spot on this mostly wooded 3/4 acre, Dagit's garden resembles a layered green tableau defined by many features, rather than a single, central one.
The sandstone pavers, stepping-stones, cobblestones, and pebble paths zig and zag up the hill. They're intentionally meandering, sometimes misaligned, "throwing the path off the path," Dagit says.
They're not made to get quickly from A to Z. They're meant for exploring. They promise surprises around the bend and different views at every turn.
"Japanese gardens excel in eccentricity and they're asymmetrical, off-axis," Dagit says. It's a concept many American gardeners find discomforting.
In the late 19th century and early 20th, there was no such discomfort. In fact, Japanese gardens were quite fashionable in North America then.
John and Lydia Morris, for example, traveled to Japan in the 1880s and returned with a Japanese gardener and a landscape architect to work at their Chestnut Hill estate, which eventually became Morris Arboretum.
"We even have a picture of Lydia wearing a kimono," says Paul W. Meyer,
arboretum director.
More recently, Diane Eyer, a psychologist from Newtown, became enamored of Japanese gardens and hired Henderson to design one for her. It's 20 feet by 80 feet and incorporates a pond for koi and goldfish, Japanese maples, bamboo, rhododendron, and other traditional plants.
"We wanted a Japanese garden because of the peacefulness and water features,"
says Eyer, who often meditates in her spare, mostly green, garden.
Dagit's garden, too, is very green, although fall brings pops of red from seven Japanese maples. But for the maples and some azaleas, the garden's colors are subdued and the plant list short.
That is by design. Although Japan is blessed with a temperate climate and a wide range of plants, displaying this variety, or emphasizing color, has never been the point of gardens there.
Most commonly used trees include pine, maple, plum, cherry, magnolia, Hinoki cypress, and cedar. Also popular are bamboo; azalea, iris, hydrangea, and chrysanthemum; and green ground covers, such as moss.
In Dagit's garden, the red, white, and pink azaleas bloom for three weeks in April, then fade into a green sea of pachysandra, or Japanese spurge. A small rock garden sports more green - ivy, vinca, hosta, fern - and in summer, the colorful (and decidedly un-Japanese) impatiens Alice insists upon every year.
Dagit dug out five small ponds connected by small waterfalls, taking care to follow the contour of an existing water swale. The idea was to harmonize with nature, rather than look man-made.
While the falls are not visible from every corner of the garden, the faint sound of rippling water can be heard throughout. (In dry landscapes, water can be represented symbolically with sand and gravel that are raked in patterns.)
Dagit pauses on a path to savor the sound of the falls and notes the sunlight arcing through the trees, before proceeding slowly on his way. This garden, he says, strives to be a Japanese stroll garden.
Being in a traditional stroll garden, says Henderson, the Japanese garden designer, "is like being on a large scroll painting that unfolds as you move along. You can never see the garden in its entirety. You might catch glimpses, but just when you think you're about to see the whole thing across the pond, it's obscured by trees or islands.
"There's a lot of complexity in that," says Henderson, who studied in Kyoto 30 years ago with Kinsaku Nakane, considered one of Japan's foremost landscape architects.
Dagit understands that "we can never make a truly Japanese garden because that isn't us. It will always be an American garden."
But he's trying. So for now, let's call his garden style what he calls it: "totally eclectic Japanese." Which means he and Alice can revel in the beauty and simplicity of their Japanese-influenced garden, while sitting on the terrace in their utterly American Adirondack chairs, sipping a glass of sauvignon blanc.
It means they can freely enjoy those bright impatiens. And they can, with healthy abandon, rev up the outdoor stone bar, which Dagit built, of course, for parties.
Gardens, whatever their ancestry, are meant to be enjoyed, after all.
Foundations of mountainside teahouse that 'floated on air' discovered in Kyoto
Date: 05/11/2010
Source: Mainichi Japan
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| One of the foundation stones of "Kanunken" is pictured in Yawata, Kyoto, on Nov. 4. (Mainichi) |
"Amongst classical teahouses, there are no other examples (of this kind of construction). I imagine the people drinking tea there felt as if they were relaxing above the clouds," said architectural historian and professor emeritus at the Kyoto Institute of Technology Masao Nakamura.
The teahouse is believed to have been worked on by famous Edo-period architect and tea master Enshu Kobori (1579-1647), who worked for the Shogunate in designing homes for Imperial Family members.
The foundation stones were found on the eastern slope of Otokoyama Mountain and are believed to have been on the grounds of "Takinomotobo," one of 48 lodging facilities said to have existed on the mountain. The tea master and monk Shokado Shojo (1584-1639), was in charge of Takinomotobo. Historical documents say that Shojo and Enshu together built the teahouse, named "Kanunken" (relaxing house above the clouds), around 1630.
There were three foundation stones found, located at around 80 meters above sea level on the mountainside. The stones are believed to have been used for setting up "tokobashira" (alcove posts). Using an old floor map of Takinomotobo, researchers learned that the building supported by the stones jutted out from the mountainside about eight meters, helping researchers identify the building as Kanunken.
The architectural technique for building off of a slope is known as "kakezukuri" and was also used for the stage at the main building of Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto. In kakezukuri-style buildings, there is thought to have usually been around 6.5 meters from the foundation stones to the post-supported floor.
The Kanunken teahouse was 3.8 meters by 5.4 meters in size. There are thought to have been 11 windows on three sides of the teahouse for lighting. On the south side, instead of a garden, Kanunken is thought to have had a veranda that followed along the building eastward, allowing people a view of the scenery below.
Both Kanunken and Takinomotobo were lost to fire in 1773. Takinomotobo was rebuilt, but Kanunken was not.
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