Japanese Zen Garden: Japanese

Introduction about Japanese Zen Garden

We begin with creating a Japanese Garden from scratch and we have been lucky to get some guidance and advice from Ramon Smit who we have been following on Facebook for a while. He has created a beautiful Japanese inspired garden from a blank canvas. Obviously it has taken time to produce the final results but his story shows what can be achieved by either planting up an entire garden or using one-off Japanese plants to create structure and / or colour in an already established garden. Here in his own words is Ramon’s story about creating a Japanese Garden:

Ramon’s stunning Japanese Garden, which he created himself from a blank canvas

Almost 10 Years ago we decided to buy a house with a garden. We were living in an apartment on the 11th floor at the time and we started looking for affordable houses with a garden. We found a house in a place called Gouda an old red brick house from the 1920’s (Yes the place famous for its cheese) with a very nice backyard ( 20m x 7m and by Dutch standards, that’s quite large). Even before we signed the contract I already made a drawing of the garden I had in my mind and was certain it must be a garden in the Japanese Style. My girlfriend was ok with it so (after I promised to make her a sunbathing spot) first we did some work in the house and then I started breaking the old garden down and started from scratch.

Ramon created his Japanese Garden from a blank canvas

The plants I did not want were dug up and taken by the old owner. (I only kept the boxwood shrubs). I dug out all of the grass and started to excavate the stream. I did this all by hand. The grass I turned upside down to make small hills and added the excavated soil. It took some time to finish because the stream was to be 30 meters long and this ends in a small canal behind my garden (lucky me!)
Now it was time to buy some plants. I had done some research in my collection of Japanese garden books so I knew exactly what to buy – maples, azaleas, ferns, pine, hosta, Ginkgo and a 2 meter tall yew Cloud Tree (which I shaped into a garden bonsai) so bought as much as my car could carry and planted them in the garden. Only to find with all the plants in the grounds, the garden was still empty. I had only a small budget so it took a few months of saving before I could buy some!