garden

chronicle the land's transformation through
stewardship and craftsmanship to its current
plateau of perfection. Originally, the garden
was inspired by the Sister City program
(Portland became the sister city of Sapporo,
Japan, in 1959) and was the vision of the
Japanese Garden Society of Oregon and professor
Takuma Tono, who graduated from
Cornell and then taught in Tokyo before
returning to the United States, and was commissioned
in 1963 to design and landscape
the garden. The plan for the garden started
taking shape in the early 1960s before construction
began in 1965 and continued without
pause until its full completion in 1990. What
set the Portland Japanese Garden apart was
its methodical installation. Other gardens
were built fast and furious in a year, maybe
two. But it took nearly 30 years to construct
Portland's garden. During that time, a series of
craftsmen journeyed from Japan and accomplished
the gradual, systematic design. "The
garden was so well integrated with a sense
of the place and its natural environment,"
Uchiyama points out, "that no major grading
was necessary."
Continuity was critical, which is why the
gardener craftsmen came for spans of two to
four years and labored with head gardeners
who remained for 30 years to oversee the overall
vision. Throughout its lifespan, the garden
has gradually knit together, always changing,
but always answering to its founding principles.
As Uchiyama likes to say, "a garden
evolves, but its concept and design stay."
As for the design, the Pordand garden is
composed of the traditional elements typical of
Japanese style and features five areas: a strolling
garden with its characteristic zigzag bridge
to deflect evil, a humility-reinforcing tea garden
with a tea house in which the ritual tea
ceremony is performed, a flat garden of meditative
raked sand, as well as a sand and stone
garden mirroring those found in Zen monasteries,
and a natural garden which — unlike
the other compositions — is meant to be experienced
and perceived physically rather than
beheld from a distance. Each transports you,
but the broader lesson throughout is the interrelatedness
of all forms in life. "It's a feeling of
connection that we're trying to convey, and the
garden is the means," Uchiyama explains.
If the Pordand Japanese Garden's newest
curator seems so comfortable with his craft that
he expounds truths about existence, gardening
and where those two concepts intercept while
nonchalandy cradling pruners, that's because
he was raised among gardeners. In Japan,
Uchiyama's family has served the land as professional
gardeners since 1909, and his own
intensive field training began at age 10. As
a result, he doesn't know the meaning of a
summer break. But he also has an inherent
knowledge of the meaning and associations
behind the rhythms and customs of Eastern
gardening. For a time, he rebelled, joining the
Peace Corps just to get away. "I escaped the family
tradition," he admits, but eventually returned
to the fold, with a redefined approach. He likes
to say that he's redrawn his understanding. In
1988, after studying Eastern landscape architecture
in Japan, he attended school in this
country — earning a bachelor's and master's
in landscape architecture from the University
of Illinois — to learn the tenets of Western
landscape architecture. From there, he was
instrumental in the restoration of the 3-acre Japanese
garden at the Denver Botanic Gardens in
2002. As a result of a lifelong closeness with
landscapes, Uchiyama is infinitely copasetic
with the Portland garden and its maintenance,
but never casual.
Horticultural skill is paramount in this canvas
of intricately juxtaposed lines and curves, the
ambiance the result of rhododendrons pruned
into sleek mounds that seem to be one continuous
surface and pines painstakingly plucked
of excess needles one by one at precisely a certain
time. In Japanese gardens, the goal is "to
distill the essence of each element into its natural
form," and even stones and bamboo edging
are treated as individuals. "Instead of standing
like soldiers, wood pegs used to retain the edge
of the pond are uneven, of different sizes and
given different orientations." Uchiyama insists
that a Japanese garden isn't only about techniques:
"It's the unified vision."
By heightening awareness of all the
Portland Japanese Gardens' inner workings
and by explaining its processes and roots,
Uchiyama hopes to reach out to all who
maneuver the steppingstones in its pathways
and brush against the venerable sheared
conifers. And time is a critical element here,
as "the garden is enriched by the passage of
time," according to Uchiyama. Although the
Portland garden is mature by Japanese-
American standards, it's merely in its
adolescence in the greater scheme of
Japanese gardens. "One hundred years is the
Japanese standard for maturity," Uchiyama
explains. "We're still giving the garden its
flavor." As for Sada Uchiyama, he's in it for
the long haul. "I know that things would
and should change," says Uchiyama. "We're
just beginning a long journey." /r