Anyone can build a garden with a fine view, but it’s much harder to integrate that view into a design so expansive that it extends seamlessly to the outside landscape. The Entsu-ji garden in Kyoto, Japan, has this magic. Built in the early 17th century, the garden and the temple complex it is situated in was originally the second home of Emperor Gomizuno but later became a Zen Buddhist monastery, with the garden becoming a place for contemplation.
The secret to the garden’s beauty lies in the way it harmonizes with the nature all around it. For starters, the garden opens up to an unblocked view of Mount Hiei, 6.5 kilometers away and a sacred place for many Japanese. In addition, this breathtaking view is framed by cedars and Japanese cypress trees that grow beyond the garden’s boundary.
This is a place to slow down and take notice of how the natural and the man-made fuses into a single thing. The lower branches of all the trees have been removed so that their long, slender trunks seem to repeat the upright supports of the viewing platform. The mountain is framed by the vertical line of the bare trunks and the horizontal lines of the foliage that bounds the exterior of the garden. Between Entsu-ji and the mountain lie many buildings. but these are screened out by other trees, so that there is nothing to block the view. The result is an illusion that Entsu-ji and Mount Hiei are enjoined as one. I was there just last month, seated on the viewing platform with my eyes surveying the scene in front of me, when the lines of this poem came flooding back.
“We sit together, the mountain and me
until only the mountain remain.”
Li Bai (701-762), from ‘The Birds have Vanished’