A book explores the beauties of Japanese gardens

11.04.2019

A passionate horticulturist and art history graduate, British author Sophie Walker pays homage to Japanese gardens and their stories through a new book, The Japanese Garden. Far from the clear paths and traced to the rule of the French gardens, a thousand leagues from the imposing side of the English gardens, the Japanese gardens are thought of as zones of freedom, where one confines oneself to studying and guiding the nature to to reproduce the wild beauty in miniature version - and where we add, in some places, symbolic "zen" elements.

The book by Sophie Walker does not offer any practical advice and she does not claim to be a master of gardening: she explores Japan through its most beautiful gardens without giving the addresses. On the other hand, it shares a hundred concrete examples and as many beautiful images to reveal, through rich and precise explanations, another dimension of the Japanese garden: that, born there are more than 800 years, a space less dedicated to aesthetics and strolling than to reflection, philosophy and spirituality.