Your opinion about Australian natives in Japanese gardens

[kvan64]

I thought it would be odd. What is your opinion?

[kcpoole]

Totally appropriate if you ask me
a Japanese garden should be inspired and have many elements of a traditional garden in Japn, but that does not mean it can ONLY have Japanese elements

Like saying that a Bonsai can only be of a Japanese tree

Ken

[kvan64]

Thanks Ken. Very well said. But don't take me wrong, I do love natives as bonsai and I do love eucalyptus. Just that I found these are hard to control when it comes to ground growing. These are just too large and tall compared with other trees in the garden.

[anttal63]

Hey Kev
if it cant be sculpted and controlled then it does not belong. Japanese garden is what we are talking about yes Then a native aussie garden is very different.

[Jarrod]

I have always wanted to doa japanese garden using aussie native plants, but as ant said, need to be trees you can sculpt and train to a degree.

[craigw60]

There is a fantastic Japanese garden in Cowra which has many native plants in it. I think the big eucalypts would not be appropriate but some of the smaller growing ones could be used. The garden in Cowra has lots of westringa and correa etc all used as clipped shrubs.
Craigw

[Guy]

would it be seen as a positive or a negative to have them removed?

[DMS]

The Japanese garden concentrates more on form and shape than it does specififc plant species. The flattened ball clip is what brings forward the feeling. In Japan, the Japanese garden is built with a particular palate of plants only because they are native to their area or they perform really well in that climate. The backdrop for many of these gardens are large cryptomeria forests and the like. Given that is the case it would not matter too much whether the backdrop is Eucalyptus or other. It is the symbolism and placement in the foreground that is important. Zen styling dictates that less is more. Garden designers need to be clear in the feeling they are trying to convey. It shouldnt matter if the shrub is a correa, blackboy , camellia or azalea.

[Damian Bee]

The Eucy's are part of this garden possibly for a couple of important reasons which have been overlooked, one reason is scale, the other maybe the connection with the surrounding landscape.
These trees are providing some vertical scale to this piece and they also connect the foreground to the surrounds of the garden and the garden to its location.

On a similar point, as KC and DMS mentioned.
The fact that it is a Japanese style garden does not mean that the plants within must be Japanese. Many of the plants used within Japanese gardens are not originally from Japan.

I have designed many types of gardens in the past using strictly Australian plants in place of European or Asian plants.
The use of plant varieties within a garden can depend upon many things, but the client brief and the designers abilities in choosing matches and locating plants in the garden are two of the big factors.

Lets say KC approached a designer and said 'I would like a garden just like that which he might have seen at Raikyu-Ji' or similar then it would be the designers task to research and find the appropriate plants that match for the job and make the relevant substitutions.

In relation to controlling plants, most trees can be controlled in their growth, the success of the plants within the garden depends on how they are styled and where in the garden they are placed.

As I discovered early on in my horticultural life, the full potential of Australian plant species has really come into its own in the latter part of last century. As beautiful as exotic plants and scenery is, our own has a unique and personal quality. As a nation, few of us have had the pride to grow our own. Instead we have been busy replicating what everyone else has while erasing what we had.

Beauty can be found in the most unlikely places, yesterday I was en route to look at prospective work in Tarneit. On the way I traveled through many Km's of developers wasteland, near the end of the trip I spotted a creek with a ford of Lichen covered Basalt surrounded by farmland. It is a neglected place with a great ugly concrete culvert slapped over the top of it but it still caught my eye. Before it was so poorly developed it would have been even more of an amazing place.

If on the other hand KC had said in his brief 'I would like a garden just like that which he might have seen at Raikyu-Ji, but with Australian plants' then all of the plants would be substituted for Australian plants with similar key characteristics.
Depending on the style of the garden (zen, natural, dry, etc and the period you are trying to emulate, these factors may also influence your decisions.

Overall with certain types of Japanese gardens, the theme is to recreate a scene from nature such as Matsushima Bay at Ise, Yosemite Creek in the Blue Mountains, a scene from the Great Dividing Range or William Bay in WA.
I am not sure what the overall concept is with the garden in question but in the end I believe that the Eucy's have their place.

It's a complex topic with many avenues and layers to explore but it's time I went outside

[Mojo Moyogi]

Kvan, there is a garden in Japan, I think it is at the Australian Embassy in Tokyo, that used Australian native plants to create a traditional Japanese garden.

Cheers,
Mojo

[nealweb]

I reckon DMS and Craigw have nailed it, the japanese garden is a design concept and then you create the design using plants that will thrive in your area, there are many parts of Oz where traditional japanese garden plants would just never be strong and healthy so why not substitute something that is going to grow there but still achieve the same design. Many natives can easily be clipped to shape.

[Greth]

It is a matter of taste, some people like a total Japanese look, which means Japanese species, others are happy with any good looking bonsai, could be Australian or any other species.
I think there are a lot of Aussie natives which can make good bonsai, small leaves and hardy temperament work well, but if you really want to go Japanese head for species which are probably harder to keep in our climate, but suit the mood perfectly. Maybe we are just creating a whole new world of bonsai, and the off beat melaleucas today are tomorrow's classics.

[Bretts]

Yep Japanese gardens are about the feelings they can evoke not about where the plants/trees come from.
It is obviously hard to call this from the pictures but it does seem the gums may have been wrongly placed and or groomed.

[MattA]

I dont know if it was a design intent but I love the way that euc keeps drawing my eye up into the sky then back to the garden bringing it all into perspective.....

[Kyushu Danji]

If it works, use it. I used to be a bit precious about having certain species in a certain type of garden, but I'm sure there are even japanese natives that wouldn't fit in a japanese garden, and as others have already pointed out, they use exotics in their gardens anyway!