A Dry Stone Garden

One of the great advantages of visiting gardens is collecting ideas for your own. Recently I was in Japan, and while there, I visited several magnificent gardens. I drank in their quiet beauty.

The central courtyard at Kennin-ji Temple, Kyoto

I revelled in the shape and placement of rocks.

A natural basin in a dark stone at Ryoan-ji Temple in Kyoto

I marvelled at the cloud pruning that revealed the essence of distant trees.

Beautifully shaped and artfully placed trees at Kenrokuen garden in Kanazawa

But never did I expect to come home to incorporate any of these elements in my rural Quebec garden. Yet, to my great surprise, that is what happened.

First, let me show you what inspired me to do this. It wasn’t an elaborately pruned tree or an arrangement of perfectly oriented rocks. Rather it was a slightly weedy dry river of rocks that I saw at Tenshaen, a modest garden in Uwajima.  

A dry river of stones at Tenshaen.

 

The map of this garden names the area with a single word, Karekawa. Karekawa are dry landscape gardens. They feature stylized representations of water rather than water itself. Often they do this by using raked gravel, sand, or rock formations to evoke the image of rivers, lakes, or oceans. This style of garden is meant to encourage meditation and contemplation, directing your mind to focus on the spiritual and aesthetic aspects of nature rather than a literal representation.

 

I had seen one of the best known of these dry landscape gardens at Ryoan-ji Temple in Kyoto and had admired the elegance and simplicity of its design.

 

 

Fifteen stones are set into raked gravel in this quiet courtyard garden. You cannot see all fifteen stones from any point of view.

 

I would never dream of doing anything similar in my garden — such a sophisticated design would feel out of place. Yet the dry stone river at Tenshaen Garden, much simpler and on a smaller scale, immediately brought to mind an area in my own garden that has been troubling me ever since I moved into my new house a year and a half ago.

 

Surrounded by enormous boulders left behind when the glaciers retreated, the house sits at the top of a hill looking down onto Lake Massawippi. When I first moved in, the view looked like this:

 

What a mess!

 

After removing most of the vegetation, the shape of the boulders began to be clear: rounded humps of stone, with small pockets of moss and scrubby grass.

 

 

Finally I could see the shape of the boulders.

 

What to do with the space between the giant rocks? Could I fill it in with a small pond? What if I levelled the space entirely and filled it with plants? I had many ideas but nothing seemed right.

 

By the end of last summer, though, eager to do something rather than to leave it be, I added some prickly shrubs at the far end of the opening to keep the deer from coming into the garden and planted some low-growing rhododendrons near the front. 

 

 

Berberis ‘Concorde’ is at the back, still in pots; Rhododendron “Ramapo’ is planted nearer the front.

 

 

I was happy, or happy enough. But then I saw the dry stone river at Tenshaen and immediately I knew what to do with the space. It would become a dry stone river, running between the boulders, dropping off at the far end like a waterfall.

 

It didn’t take long for Jacques and Ken, the ‘can-do-anything’ guys who work for me, to find bucket loads of field stones, grey in tone like the granite boulders, and then to put the rocks in place.

 

 

Is Jacques Gosselin contemplating the choice of rock or simply looking at the view?

 

As more stones were added, it became obvious that we needed to clear more scrub from the boulders at the back side of the area. Exposing more rock helped the dry stone river to feel at home.

 

I left the Barberry bushes in place for now but they too may be removed.

I transplanted the small rhododendrons into a border where they look quite comfortable. 

These Rhododendron “Rampapo” are meant to remain small.

A few days and the job was done. I’m happy with the result, although with time, I’m sure that adjustments will be made. 

Barberry bushes mark the end of the drystone river.

And who knows? With time, other ideas from the gardens I visited in Japan may find their way into my garden in Quebec. 

NOTE: This is the first blog post I’ve written in many months, but I intend to correct that. So do keep an eye out for more posts, about gardens I’ve visited and about the changes I’m making in my home garden as a result.