The term Japanese Garden is a Japanese style, can be found at private homes, in neighborhood or city parks, and at historical landmarks such as Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines and old castles. In Japanese culture, garden-making is a high art, intimately related to the linked arts of calligraphy and ink painting.
Japanese Gardens are very important to the Japanese. All of the gardens are representations of nature. The purpose of these gardens in to capture nature is the almost natural way, and do it with a touch of artistic feeling. The Japanese gardens, for the Japanese people, have an ancient history influenced by Shinto, Buddhist and Taoist philosophies. These philosophies are used in the creation of the Japanese Gardens so as to bring a spiritual sense to the gardens. The Buddhist influence makes the garden a quiet place, allowing people to look back and reflect upon themselves, or meditate.
The presentation of each garden will include a plant that will help the visitor locate the various positions from which photographs were taken, but one may also take the tour by simply clicking on Tour the Garden. Other buttons lead to a longer history of each garden, a general bibliography, a glossary, an overview of the history of early garden design, and a section on the basic elements of Japanese gardens. Instead, the site is designed simply to provide the visitor with an opportunity to visit each garden, to move through or around it, to experience it through the medium of high-quality color images, and to learn something of its history. Winter is as much a garden season in Japan as spring. The Japanese refer to snow piled on the branches of trees as Sekku, or snow blossoms, and there is a lantern known as Yukimi that is named the snow viewing lantern. Even this season that represents the death of the garden is a vital one for our Japanese gardener, while our western gardener sulks until spring. Perhaps it is the eastern acceptance of death as a necessary component of the life cycle that separates the two gardeners.The Japanese garden is not truly a singular type despite the fact that certain rules apply to every garden. The gardens differ by setting and by use. A garden that seeks to re-create nature on a small-garden sized scale. Through its maker's choice and placement of plants, it is meant to suggest the wildness of nature, a sense of motion, and the passage of time. Japanese gardens usually incorporate Shinto or Zen elements as well. Typical Japanese garden have at their center home from which the garden is viewed. In additional to residential architecture, depending on the archetype.