A Taoist Garden?

A story in the LA Times a few days ago describes the opening of a Chinese-style garden in San Marino. Although it’s been a long time since I last strolled through the gardens of Suzhou or walked around West Lake in Hangzhou, I can say that I have always loved Chinese gardens, for all of the obvious aesthetic reasons. But I am not sure I would completely agree with this line:

"There are a lot of Taoist ideas in a garden," Li says of the Chinese
religion and philosophy. "Taoism put man in nature, where Confucianism
talks about man’s place in nature," she says.

First of all, the contrast with Confucianism could be drawn more starkly. I think it is safe to say that Confucianism would understand "man" as having much more capacity and efficaciousness in changing nature for "his" own purposes. I do not have my Analects here with me, but one passage says that Way does not shape man, but man shapes Way. Which is a fundamentally un-Taoist idea, and which also might inform, to a greater degree than Taoism, the project of Chinese garden-making.

Those gardens (and I imagine the California variety is quite nice) are master works of human engineering. What makes them so beautiful is how the carefully planned designs use natural ingredients – plants, water, overlooks, etc. – to craft a setting. The idea is for the builder of the garden to express a unique artistic vision through the medium of the organic materials, using and coordinating their growth and life cycles, to produce an enhanced "natural" environment. It is nature, but nature that has been subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) manipulated by man.

However much I might enjoy the end products (Master of the Fishing Nets in Suzhou has long been my favorite), I have to wonder, however, how Taoist all of this is. Taoism puts forth a much more limited notion of intervention in nature. Better just to leave things as they are, and let Way unfold as it will, then to take such effort to design and shape and push and pull nature for human ends.

What would a truly Taoist garden look like? Rather like an overgrown field or a old growth forest than the carefully crafted human creations of Suzhou and Hangzhou. They are, indeed, beautiful. But they are not really Taoist.

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Sam Crane

I have moved The Useless Tree to WordPress. Hope this works!

Categories: Current Affairs, Taoism

13 responses to “A Taoist Garden?”

gmoke

February 19, 2008 at 12:53 am

I would suggest that a Taoist garden might look like a permaculture installation or Masanobu Fukuoka’s farm, gardening with natural forces rather than against them using minimal tillage and succession planting based upon natural systems. You could also look at the work done at Auroville in India, their tree planting and anti-erosion strategies that have changed the local climate after a few decades.
In my short time in China, I didn’t get to see many traditional Chinese gardens but have spent more time with the Japanese gardens in Kyoto, Tokyo, and Kamakura. I originally went to Japan in part because I wanted to see Ryoanji Sekitei personally, a world masterpiece.

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David Martin

February 23, 2008 at 2:34 pm

Many Japanese gardens are Buddhist, especially Zen. At Ryoanji, I was impressed by the beautiful walk toward the temple itself, with a small lake full of water lilies setting off the verdant hills. At the temple, the celebrated sand and stone garden merges neatly into a bright green moss garden to the side. Why didn’t I see anyone sitting to enjoy the pond or the moss?
Of course the rocks in Japanese gardens may intentionally evoke the mountains and streams of Chinese paintings.
Taipei is not quite a city of Chinese gardens, so the only Suzhou-style garden I’ve seen is one that occupies a small city block in central Portland, Oregon. Its integration of buildings, covered walkways, ponds, bridges, and greenery is wonderful, meaning the Huntington’s far larger garden could be worth a trip to L.A. I thought the US National Arboretum in NE Washington was supposed to get a Chinese garden, but I suspect it hasn’t happened.

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casey kochmer

February 23, 2008 at 10:21 pm

What would a truly Taoist garden look like?
It would flow in with life as life. So a non Taoist would never “see” a Taoist Garden as a garden.
Yet a Taoist sees the entire world as the garden. There are no boundaries from the cities of man to the jungles of Africa… its all the garden and of the garden which is one.
peace

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chee

May 8, 2008 at 9:52 pm

The garden is a symbol of an existing piece of land, and it encaptures in a small space the idea that was seen. Ever place could be a Taoist garden if the balance is there and the garden helps to create the balance [ying and yang].
I try to capture this in my backyard, by letting every plant conform to its own existence and I only gardening in the area as an individual who loves to see things grow. The climate in Houston is very hot in the summer and I intend to allow the plants to wither if they can not get enough water.
I started from the basic by observing the rocks and transforming the compost to dirt for the plants. As the seeds sprout with the help of water from the pond and rain, I aid this process by removing unwanted plants and placing rings [used as raised bed] around to capture the sunlight. So the garden is all in balance with nature, with air, water, fish, birds, earth, etc.
If you are interested in viewing, goto: wwww.realteachers.org/retire/rock.htm

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Sam

May 9, 2008 at 2:05 pm

Chee,
Thanks. The pictures of your garden are beautiful. Makes me think:
There the ten thousand things arise,
and in them I watch the return:
all things on and ever on
each returning to its root.
Tao Te Ching, 16

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Comment

May 10, 2008 at 8:32 pm

“I would suggest that a Taoist garden might look like a permaculture installation or Masanobu Fukuoka’s farm, gardening with natural forces rather than against them using minimal tillage and succession planting based upon natural systems.”
“gmoke” is right on about this part of his comment, at least in concept. Masanobu Fukuoka has been doing this for decades, as documented in the translation/summary of his Japanese books called “One Straw Revolution.” There are some externalities, and some of the “not doing” is actually rather laborious – for example, his ingenious adoption of the technique of coating seeds in protective mud shells. Some predictability goes out the window – but he saves a ton on not having to use chemical inputs.

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Mencius Schmenschius

November 27, 2009 at 2:52 pm

The appearance of a present day chinese garden has more to do with the landscape designer than with the concept. Western designers go for control, sterility, spacing, bare dirt, and uniformity, whereas easterners go for landscape design that evokes a feeling of being in nature.
The chinese garden in Portland illustrates this difference. Over a period of ten years the landscape design has gone from a chinese vision of evoking nature to the western vision of keeping the plants under control.
Whereas the original designer was a licensed landscape designer from Suzhou, the present gardener is a westerner without any training or educational background in chinese culture or landscape design, much less chinese garden landscape design. Sadly, she doesn’t know that she doesn’t know.
The result is that walking thru the garden is less like walking in nature and more like walking thru a plant farm like the countless ones in parking lots, in front of malls, hospitals, etc. that pass for landscaping these days.
So before drawing conclusions from viewing present day gardens about whether a chinese garden is taoist or not, one must consider whether the present designer is taoist or not. If the designer is not taoist, then the garden will not be taoist.

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brian alford

July 3, 2010 at 8:01 pm

a taoist garden is a painting from chi,the true garden is the world

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irrigation systems

July 9, 2010 at 12:47 pm

i agree completely with casey that a non Taoist would never “see” a Taoist Garden as a garden.
whereas a Taoist sees the entire world as the garden. There are no boundaries from the cities of man to the jungles of Africa… its all one.

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brian alford

July 16, 2010 at 2:49 pm

A Taoist garden is a road map with many signposts showing the WAY,it puts you in that dimension where you can feel the WAY.It smiles on us,it lays it all out for us,And lets us decided what it really is.For me walking through the moongate into a Taoist garden is entering heaven’s gateway.

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Jeremy Beauregard

April 16, 2012 at 3:32 pm

We all have different standards for beauty. In assessing the beauty of a garden, familiarization with different design traditions can come in handy. Be objective in this evaluation. When asked about your personal opinion, try to be as neutral as possible in your choice of words. Diversity is a good thing in the designing world

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Elizaveta Kramer

May 4, 2012 at 1:21 pm

A Taoist garden is believed to be made of purely natural landscape – rocks, streams, valleys, and peaks. And according to Chinese architecture, the rising and falling movements from any body of water is said to be material embodiments of Yin and Yang. A Taoist garden would probably look like paradise.

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Katy Eagles

August 23, 2012 at 11:55 am

Aww, I feel so connected with the nature! It shows how beautiful nature really is. Taoist gardens are the perfect place for soul searching. They’re so very peaceful and refreshing!

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