Part 1- teaches you the various components of Japanese Gardens.
Part 2- teaches you how to design Japanese Gardens using these components.

Transcript
“Lets have a go at Designing Japanese Gardens, using the elements we learned in Part 1.

Here we have an aerial view of the backyard. The first thing we must do is site analysis to learn about the site so we can design professionally. If you haven’t seen my Site analysis tutorial I strongly recommend watching it to aid your designs.

Site Analysis

From site analysis we have identified a large steep hill to the side of the site, a few different access points, a cool moist climate and some leftover vegetation, which we will remove because they are not traditional Japanese plants and would look out of place.

Functionality

The first thing we should do when designing gardens is to consider the functionality of the site. A garden is only successful if it gets used and people are only going to use it if it functions properly. This means we have to decide on the human circulation throughout the site and arrange viewpoints, which we know are important to Japanese gardens. True to Japanese gardens, I’m including winding paths that create a sense of exploration and mystery in the site. These paths interconnect and also lead to our important access points. The paths lead up the steep hill and logic tells us that this would be a good spot for a view point so I’m going to situate it here. I’m going to draw my lines of vision from this point to other parts of the site and do the same for a different viewpoint. Now we have our lines of vision and circulation mapped out we can design the site around it. This means: don’t plant shrubs on a path and don’t plant screening trees in a line of vision. Remember your functionality.

Now we have our functionality organised, its time to put things into the garden. To get the natural feel that Japanese gardens aspire to we shall design in this Order:

-Nature
-Hardscapes
-Vegetation
-Extras”
For full transcript, send me a message and ill get it to you !

31 Comments

  1. Please get rid of the cheap background music. It makes the whole video very chheap and in professional. If you must, then at least Japanese music.

  2. The music is horrible. Violates the peace and serenity associated with a Japanese garden. Virtually all the complaints about this go back for years. Why haven’t you done something about it? I, too, couldn’t watch to end because of it.

  3. I love the way you represent this video but I loose interest watching it… your explanation is competing with the music you incorporate… soo dis appointing… just a minute of this and I stop watching it…

  4. Is this teahouse shared with the neighbours? LOL The same goes for the mapple tree…
    Neighbours get to the point of homicidal madness for less in my experience…
    I really had some interesting neighbours. One planted thorned bushes just outside his property to block kids from taking a shortcut to the playground as he hated children. Another threw clay pots at us for apparently talking too loud. One kidnapped our neighbours dog and released him on the same day without any note, but the subtext was pretty clear… Another one used dogpoo, used cigarettes and old eggs to decorate the neighbours house and car… and that was just the beginning…

  5. Informative.
    Would benefit from photoed of done garden interspersed with the tutorial.
    Inappropriate music. Strange!

  6. Probably one of THE most informative design videos I’ve come across. You’ve hit on critical elements that I’ve been wanting to know about.
    I will echo the concern about the music ( 8 years later 😉 ) It’s very distracting and had to follow the narration at times. I’ll watch it again however as this is a gold mine of information. Thanks for sharing this. It will take a long ways down the correct way to relandscaping our new home. (New to us- yards needs serious TLC!)
    Cheers!

  7. Shut up about the music. Would y'all like Frank Sinatra or something? Either take the glorious info of piss off. You apparently don't like Hip Hop. So he has to ditch all music then. It didn't effect anything really. This is a great video. But you need a damn water source for any pond.

  8. Cant concentrate with that music in the background….gentle quiet calming music would have been fitting better a japanese garden design

  9. I made it thru 2 minutes 26 seconds. I had to give it a thumbs down because of the awful and distracting music. You don't any music.

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