Aren't the Words Winter and Garden Opposing Terms?

You sit in the midst of your Japanese garden surrounded by the purity of white new fallen snow. It never ceases to amaze you how much you enjoy coming out into the stillness of this winter garden to enjoy the peace of a world muffled even more by the insulation of snow.

What Works in a Winter Garden?

As we have mentioned earlier, the respect for what is natural is paramount to the integrity of your Japanese garden design. Using plants that are not native to your environment is a violation of what the Japanese garden design strives to achieve. If you are fortunate enough to live in an area with an abundance of indigenous evergreen plants that will make a winter garden a possibility. Winter is a great time to notice and appreciate an element of Japanese garden design called ma or "space". The bareness of the snow shrouded winter garden emphasizes the simplistic beauty of what is there.

The Japanese have a name for snow sitting upon the branches of trees. The word sekku means "snow blossoms". Japanese garden designs often have a special winter garden lantern called the yukimi or "snow viewing lantern". This lantern is often made of heavy metal or concrete. They have a large, overhanging top, a rounded candle chamber, and stand on four legs. These lanterns are called snow viewing lanterns because of the way that the tops catch the snow.

The whole concept of a winter garden seems to defy the western idea of winter as a time of grey, barren cold. The Japanese winter garden illustrates a more spiritual concept: that death is a part of life, and rebirth will come in the spring.

In the columns to follow we will continue to look at choosing and creating the various elements of your Japanese garden design.