The flowers and gardens of Japan

Japan is often called “The Land of the Cherry Blossom,” and it is true that for centuries their _Sakura-no-hana_ has been the favourite flower of the Japanese. The refinement an...

Stones and rocks are such important features in all Japanese gardens that when choosing the material for the making of a landscape garden, however large or however small, the se...

It is safe to assert that no other country has such a distinctive form of landscape gardening as Japan. In English, French, Italian, and Dutch gardens, however original in their...

A nursery garden in Japan may be called a revelation in the art of pruning. A singular idea exists in the minds of many people, that all the trees in Japan are like the dwarf sp...

“See a _kiri_ leaf fallen on the ground and know that autumn is with us” is a common saying in Japan. The leaves of the _kiri_ (pawlonia) tree are so responsive to the spirit of...

May is essentially the flower month in Japan, and a ramble through the country cannot fail to be a never-ending joy and surprise to the flower lover. It was nearly the middle of...

Having made some attempt to elucidate the mysterious and wonderful construction of Japanese gardens, I feel the reader will expect to learn something of their effect as a whole...

In Japan the flower year begins earlier than in Europe, and while the snow is still lying deep on the ground in the northern provinces, in warm and sheltered districts the _Ume_...

Of all the gardens in Japan, and surely in no other country are there so many different forms of gardening, the temple garden, or often the garden surrounding some mouldering Bu...

The last petals of the cherry blossoms have only just fallen, and Nature hastens to provide a new treasure for the flower kingdom, and the first blooms of the wistaria _Fuji no...

The pine-trees--_Matsu-no-ki_--of Japan are so closely and inseparably associated with the country, in the beauty of the landscape, the national customs and the national art, th...

What would the Japanese do without the bamboo? Indeed so extensive is the part played by the bamboo, not only in the beautifying of the land, but in her domestic economy, that t...

The “time of the lotus” is suggestive of the damp hot August days when from earliest dawn the cicadas will be singing, if their discordant noise can be described as song, and th...

If I were to be asked which of all the show gardens in Japan--a garden devoted to the cultivation of one especial flower--gave me most pleasure to visit, I should unhesitatingly...

The Japanese quite rightly give the name of _Ko haru_ or Little Spring to the Indian summer, Keats’s season of mists and mellow fruitfulness; for indeed those beautiful weeks in...

The peach blossom has never attained the fame in Japanese art, or among their poets, that its classical predecessor the plum, or its successor the cherry of patriotic fame, has...

Early in May the brilliant-coloured azaleas seem determined, by the splendour of their hues, to try and outshine their graceful, tender-coloured predecessors the plum, peach, an...

“_Asagao_ blooms and fades so quickly, only to prepare for the morrow’s glory,” such is the theme of one of the oldest songs on the _asagao_ or morning glory, written by the Chi...