Japanese Gardens. By Mrs. Basil Taylor (Harriet Osgood). Illustrated by
W. Tyndale, R.I. (Methuen. 21s. net.)—The reader of this book will put it down with the pleasant feeling that he has learnt something worth knowing of the best side of the Japanese character. Their gardens appeal, she says, " to the inner sense, to the mind and the heart. In its most real meaning a garden, to them, must be a place of repose, of con- templation, of spiritual communion with Nature." This art of gardening was originally Chinese, and though the Japanese have made it peculiarly their own, the influence of their neighbours is apparent in the rules that govern its practice. After some interesting chapters on the history and principles of the subject, she takes in detail the various parts that go to make up a perfectly planned garden. First come the stones, which she compares to the bones of the human body in their importance in the general scheme, then the accessories, such as lanterns and pagodas, bridges and gates. When all these things, and others besides, have been arranged in such a way as to produce a harmony of well- proportioned forms, flowers growing in appropriate pots are grouped in suitable places. There is nothing to correspond with our tumbled borders, where something is always going untidily to seed, for apparently "a place for everything and everything in its place " is a motto which even the flowers lay to heart in this exquisite land. Water, oddly enough in such a wet country, is a
valued addition to the garden, and Mrs. Taylor has much to tell us about it. Where it is impossible to have a real stream these wonderful people content themselves with the illusion of one. " This dried-up water scenery,' as it is called, deceives oven the unimaginative Briton, the downright American, who do not intend to be trifled with. They are beguiled by this mysterious art of water suggestion. . . . The idea is simple in the carrying out, though subtle in theory. The bed of a lake is hollowed out—not too deep, for that would upset the vraisemblance of the scheme, as, if it were not shallow, how did the water dry up so early in the season ? Sand and pebbles form the edges, and big boulders jut up as rocky islands might, while over- hanging shrubs try in vain to look at themselves in what should be the mirror below. Irises and water-grasses make a pretty group, with some low, dark rooks, and a stone lantern in another nook as if the water had just receded from their feet, and the illusion is complete." Mrs. Taylor gives us glimpses of some of her Japanese friends and of her own children, so completing her pictures, for a child is ever the best of garden " furniture." There are chapters on " Miniature Gardens," " Flower Arrangement," " Folk Lore and Legends," and other kindred subjects, which we have no space to write of more fully. The numerous illustrations are in the three•colour process, which makes many of them belie Mrs. Taylor's descriptions of the lovely colours of this land of misty beauty, though the original pictures are, no doubt, charming.
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