On to the Japanese Garden

Note: There will not be another post until late March, as I will be touring the Deep South (hopefully viewing lots of gardens.) 

   The final major garden featured in this long series of posts on my gardens is the Japanese Garden.  I started to develop it in 2000--and, of course, I am still not done.

   The first photo is of the west entrance to the garden along a path that is going downhill.  The fence was built in 2013.  It is made of ipe, a wood from Brazil, which is extremely dense, hard, and resistant to insects or other damaging items.  I oil it every spring with rosewood oil, rosewood being another tropical tree.  Hidden in the boxwood on the left is a rock shown in full in the second photo.  It had been broken in half very long ago, probably when it was brought down from what is now Canada by the last glacier.  I found it in a road ditch a quarter mile from my house.  Water flows into it from a bamboo pipe, which then flows down a natural crack, then over its side and into the ground under it.

   The third and fourth photos show the view just inside the gate, looking east through the upper part of the garden, which was developed about 2010.  There are several areas of moss, in addition to some containers of moss, throughout this area.  I visited over 60 temple gardens in Japan, and everyone has cultivated areas of moss.

   The next three photos show the azumaya, or "viewing house."  Such houses are common in Japanese gardens.  I built it myself in 2014, the inside walls constructed of stucco.   Also seen in these photos is a small stream I made, sourced with water from my well.  It is forced through bamboo pipes in three separate water drops into small pools. The water then continues downhill to where it empties onto the ground amongst a grouping of boxwoods.