Hello everyone! I’m Rachel McNamara, Project Manager here at Intreegue. I’m thrilled to take over the Garden of the Month feature for July and share with you a recent adventure filled with blooming beauty. Let’s dive in and explore together!
Intreegue Garden of the Month: Portland Japanese Garden
“The most beautiful and authentic Japanese garden in the world outside of Japan.”
– His Excellency Nobuo Matsunaga, the former Ambassador of Japan to the United States.
A few weekends ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the Portland Japanese Garden to experience this epitome of Japanese garden design. The showcase of these garden design tenets was both lovely and inspiring. Here are some of my take aways that I’m sure I’ll be experimenting with soon.
- The use of elevation changes and winding paths to create multiple views to an element while also allowing for little garden pockets. All together they made a huge variety of experiences in a surprisingly small footprint. It also made open spaces, like the dry gravel gardens, seem particularly vast.
- I found the concept of Shakkei or “borrowed scenery,” where views of the world beyond the garden are carefully arranged and incorporated, to be an interested contrast to the near constant sense of enclosure created with fences or walls or even all those elevation changes. I had my best and most surprising view of Mt. Hood that day!
- In the Japanese garden design, flowers are generally considered a distraction so the gardens are primarily composed of textures of green and hardscape. There were so many details within the paving, steps, and walls, let alone the boulders, stone lanterns, and other sculptures. Even light and shadow were central elements adding to the serene lushness.
- Water played so many roles – There were ponds, streams, and fountains as focal points, interesting reflections creating even more textural variety, and the sound of fountains bubbling or man-made waterfalls rushing accompanied nearly every space.
Spending time at the Portland Japanese Garden was a real treat—there’s so much to learn from the way the space is designed! From winding paths to the clever use of “borrowed scenery,” I came away with plenty of fresh ideas to try out. I hope you enjoyed this little tour, and I can’t wait to share more garden adventures with you soon.
Cheers,
Rachel McNamara
Intreegue Design is a licensed landscape architecture firm operating in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Napa Valley, California. We offer the added value of having expert horticulturists, forest conservation planners, Chesapeake Bay Landscape Design professionals and ISA-certified arborists in house.
Learn more about working with Intreegue and our Design Process.
