Inside Your Japanese Garden

Learn how to create a tranquil outdoor space at home with this practical and inspiring guide!

With instructive drawings and step-by-step techniques, Inside Your Japanese Garden walks you through designing and creating your very own Japanese garden. From small projects like benches and gates, to larger undertakings like bridges and mud walls, this book provides a wide variety of ways to enhance the space around your home, no matter the size. Instructions on how to work with stone, mud and bamboo as well as a catalogue of the 94 plant varieties used in the gardens shown in the book round out this complete guide.

This book also features 20 gardens that author Sadao Yasumoro has designed and built in Japan, and some like those at Visvim shop in Tokyo and at Yushima Tenjin in Tokyo are open to the public. From small tsuboniwa courtyard gardens to a large backyard stroll garden with water features, stairs and walls, these real-life inspirations will help spark your own garden plan.

These inspirational garden projects include:

• Tea Garden for an Urban Farmhouse featuring a clay wall with a split-bamboo frame and a stone base
• The Landslide That Became a Garden with a terraced slope, trees, bushes, long grasses and moss
• A Buddha's Mountain Retreat of Moss and Stone with vertical-split bamboo and brushwood fencing
• Paradise in an Urban Jungle with a pond, Japanese-style bridge, and stone lanterns

Each garden is beautifully photographed by Hironori Tomino and many have diagrams and drawings to show the essential elements used in the planning and construction.

About the Authors

Joseph Cali was born and raised in New York City and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in Fine Art and Painting. He has lived and worked in Japan as an interior designer, graphic designer, copywriter and illustrator for over 30 years. His work has appeared in numerous books and publications. He is the coauthor, with Azby Brown, of The Japanese Dream House. His other books include The New Zen Garden and Create Your Own Japanese Garden.

Sadao Yasumoro, now in his eighties, has been a Japanese garden designer and builder for over 60 years. After high school he traveled all around Japan to study nature and visit the country's great gardens, and was deeply moved by the beauty of garden landscapes made by unknown masters. He went on to study under some of Japan's most famous garden designers, including Katsuo Saito. Yasumuro's work has appeared in many publications in Japan. This is his first book in English.