CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Our family trips often include a visit to a botanical garden or arboretum, so my husband and kids were resigned to the fact that the itinerary for our recent trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, included a morning at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden.
What they didn’t expect was how much they would enjoy this somewhat modest and unassuming space and the sense of place and calm it provided. This style of “scholar’s garden” has four key elements, refined over hundreds of years, that make for a powerful experience with nature in a relatively small, simple space. The experience left me wondering how the theory behind the design could be replicated in a Northeast Ohio garden.
The Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden was built in the 1980s and was, according to the garden brochure, “the first full-scale classical Chinese garden constructed outside of China,” the significance of which I did not fully appreciate until I learned what a classical Chinese garden is. The classical Chinese garden style originated in the 1300s during the Ming dynasty and were always within enclosed spaces in relatively urban settings. These compact oases were an integral part of “scholar garden-homes,” which were the homes of Chinese bureaucrats and their large extended families.
To provide a microcosm of the natural world in the scholar’s compound, the garden was composed of four symbolic elements: rocks, water, plants, and the surrounding building itself. Rocks were intended to symbolize mountains, which were believed to be the home of deities and immortals. Mountains themselves represent permanence, as well. One of the most impressive features of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden was the sheer variety and number of large rocks throughout the grounds, all of which were porous limestone rocks imported from the Lake Tai region of the Yangtze River delta region during the garden’s construction.
The water element, which symbolizes flow, was provided in the form of a large lagoon with murky water of a greenish hue. The cloudiness is provided by the jade-colored clay that lines the constructed pond and intended to better reflect the buildings and trees that surround the pond. The effect also made it harder to see the koi fish and turtle inhabitants until they were almost at the water’s surface.
Most intriguing was the inclusion of the building itself as a key garden element to represent humans and to illustrate the yin and yang of a garden as a place where nature and civilization coexist. The Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden has a beautiful building surrounding it to represent the scholar’s home, constructed using traditional Ming period techniques with no nails, screws, or glue, and the effect is to create an urban oasis that promotes a sense of peace and sanctuary in the middle of bustling Vancouver. Because the building walls, windows, and doorways were integral design elements in the garden, traversing the garden paths felt like walking through a kaleidoscope as we saw the same plants, rocks, and water from constantly shifting angles.
In particular, the “leak” windows, which had 43 unique latticework designs, and the rounded “moon” doorways provided framing and peekaboo views that kept the eye moving. Even the walkways have meaning, embedded with colored stones that form intricate patterns, with rounded shapes symbolizing female energy and square forms symbolizing the male.
The plants, while not an afterthought, are but one piece of the overall garden design and are selected for their symbolism and how their shape and structure interact with the other garden elements and the senses. Pine and cypress trees, for example, represent virtue and longevity with their strong appearance, while bamboo embodies resilience with its ability to bend without breaking. Other plants, like cherry trees, might be chosen for intricate leaves and branches providing dappled sun in shade, while other plants with large leaves, like ornamental banana trees, make a delightful comforting sound when it rains.
The middle-class scholar’s garden-house during the Ming dynasty and the classical Chinese garden’s size, status, and purpose are directly comparable have parallels to suburban and semi-urban Northeast Ohio gardens—certainly more so than the famous sprawling, manicured gardens of European royalty like Versailles. How would a gardener translate the four elements to a garden in Parma or Cleveland Heights in a way that is as authentic to our time and place as the classical Chinese garden was 900 years ago in Suzhou, China?
A common complaint about native gardens is that they appear weedy and unkempt, and a frequent landscaping and gardening industry response is to produce cultivars that are more colorful or compact. Perhaps the issue is the lack of balance in either an expanse of lawn or an expanse of wildflowers, and by incorporating the other elements of a classical Chinese garden, we can create a harmony of nature and civilization in our own garden-homes.