A Guide to the Japanese Garden at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens and it's symbolism

As you enter the garden, you pass under the roofed gate and beyond the sleeve fence or ‘Sodei-gaki’, where you discard all worldly cares. Only when you fully enter the space can you view the whole garden and become at one with it. 

At the entrance you will find a lantern to light your way. Our lanterns include one of ancient design named after the Warlord Furata Oribe, and an imposing lantern named after the ancient Kasuga Shrine in Nara, Japan. Another is called the Yukimi or snow-viewing lantern: snow settling on branches is known as sekku or snow blossoms. A Japanese Garden is intended to be enjoyed at all times in all seasons.  

To one side of the doorway, you will find water in a ‘Chozu-bachi’ or granite basin symbolically provided for cleansing hands and mouth.

Many plants in Japanese Gardens are clipped into rounded shapes, creating a peaceful atmosphere.  

Fallen blossoms in Spring and leaves in Autumn represent the transient nature of life. Some plants are topiarised to suggest natural features such as clouds, here Pinus strobus, and the foliage lifted to expose decorative stems such as those on Phyllostachys nigra. Here you will also find Nandina domestica, the sacred bamboo.

Our Waiting Arbour provides a sheltered place in which to reflect and to view the garden.  

Like many of the artefacts around the garden, it is made of bamboo and cedar which are both plentiful in Japan. The bamboo waterspout is often used as a deer scarer to protect rice crops in rural areas and the rain chain or ‘Kusari-doi’ is a decorative and musical alternative to a western down pipe.

Every Bonsai dreams
of being a large tree,
until the wind blows.

Stone is a very important feature in a Japanese Garden. Dry landscape gardens sometimes contain little more than carefully place rocks set in a ‘sea’ of gravel. Stones can point upright, symbolising mountain peaks or be laid on their sides to form a bridge. The Japanese never use a ‘diseased’ stone which is misshapen on top, or a ‘dead’ stone which is an upright stone laid horizontal, or a ‘pauper’ stone that has no visible relationship with other stones. Stone placement today still follows principles laid down over a thousand years ago. 

A dry slate gorge represents a watercourse in our garden and a boulder bubbling water symbolises an active volcano. Raked gravel represents waves and the sea.