A Japanese Touch for Your Garden

A Japanese Touch for Your Garden is a concise introduction to the practical aspects of making a Japanese garden. Whether it's a spacious suburban lot, an office courtyard, or a tiny, inner-city backyard, here are hundreds of creative but time-honored ways to make maximum use of the available space.
Readers will learn how to lay stones and pathways and how to create intriguing sand patterns like the ones in Zen temple gardens. They will learn about Japanese lanterns, miniature pagodas, water basins, gates, and walls, and will be shown--step-by-step--how to make a bamboo lattice fence. Notes on the care of bamboo, moss, and grass are provided as are names of native North American plants and trees that can be substituted for conventional Japanese varieties. Schematic layout plans, detailed how-to explanations, and over 150 color photographs of Japanese gardens, old and new, offer ideas for endless variations. In this revised edition, all the photographs have been replaced with new ones, and the number of color pages has doubled, making the book much more attractive.
Thoroughly up-to-date in its approach and based on the principle that a garden must satisfy the gardener, not a set of inflexible guidelines, this book encourages readers to choose freely from the wide range of traditional Japanese design elements that suit individual needs and tastes. Whether one lives in the country, city, or somewhere in between, he or she will discover numerous ways to transform--simply, inexpensively, and with ones own two hands--that back porch, corridor, or yard into an intimate, tranquil oasis, that will reward all the planning and work with a rich and ever-changing beauty.

Kiyoshi Seike (1918-2005) was one of the most original and thoughtful residential designers in Japan, creating countless private residential and large-scale commercial and public works.
Masanobu Kudo (1924-1996) was an expert on flowers, trees, and plants, who contributed to numerous publications on flower arranging and Japanese gardens. He edited Sakutei no Jiten (Encyclopedia of Garden Making) with Kiyoshi Seike.
David H. Engel is a prominent American landscape architect and site planner.
Renowned photographer Sadao Hibi specializes in traditional Japanese architecture and gardens.