Japanese Garden Grows From Reclaimed Water
It is hard to imagine that in the heart of urbanized Van Nuys there exists a poetic place that invites you to experience the beauty and serenity of the strolling gardens built for Japanese feudal lords in the 18th and 19th centuries.
But, not far from the Ventura Freeway, at the north end of Woodley Avenue, such a tranquil place does exist--a 6 1/2-acre Japanese Garden filled with the symbolism and mystique of the Orient.
And, more surprisingly, it is a project of the city’s Department of Sanitation and adjoins the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant.
The garden, built seven years ago, belies the fact that it is poised atop a perennial flow of recycled water coursing through a complex network of pipes to service a vast valley population, irrigate the golf courses, green belts and lakes of the Sepulveda Basin, and maintain the garden’s own lakes, plants and 20 species of bird life.
The main purpose of the garden, said administrator Eugene Greene, “is to show the public how reclaimed water can be used and reused.” An average of 1,000 visitors sign up each month for guided tours of the garden and the facility, he added.
The garden exists, Greene said, because Tillman, the city engineer who proposed the building of the plant in the 1970s, was fascinated with Japanese garden design. He was a student of the late Koichi Kawana, a noted Japanese garden designer who taught art and architecture history at UCLA.
Tillman commissioned Kawana to undertake the garden project at the reclamation plant in the 1980s, said Greene, who worked closely with Kawana and helped to implement his designs.
Katherine Bender is one of several volunteer docents who show visitors the natural wonders of the garden and its adjoining state-of-the-art water reclamation facility.
“Dr. Kawana’s inspiration for the garden design is rooted in the centuries-old precepts of the Japanese culture,” Bender said.
Each detail of the garden design, she noted, was carried out with utmost reverence for the traditional placement of each boulder, even pebbles, trees and shrubs and ponds that so stunningly reflect the rising and descending profile of the garden and its rich complement of azaleas, cherry trees, magnolias, weeping willows, wisteria, irises, lotus and waterlilies.
The two-hour tour through the Siuho-en, this “garden of water and fragrance,” soon becomes an introspective journey, enriching one’s perception and appreciation of nature, and enabling the visitor to appreciate the variations in Japanese garden styles.
The dry garden, or karensansui, close to the main entrance, is spread with gravel symbolizing the ocean and the swirling patterns raked on its surface express the waves and the moods of the sea.
The chisen-kaiyushiki style or “wet garden with promenade” prevailing through most of the landscape is open and bright, revealing new, unexpected vistas of the garden, its lakes and mythical islands of good fortune, at each turn.
Another garden style features viewing arbors that are an integral part of Zen Buddhist concepts.
“They are places where one comes to rest, to meditate, to view the garden. In olden times, it is where a samurai habitually came to clear his mind before a battle,” Bender explained.
A major architectural feature of the Japanese Garden is the shoin building that projects over the main lake of the garden, duplicating the style of residential dwellings developed for aristocrats, monks and samurai warriors during the 14th and 15th centuries. The interior of the shoin has been modified to allow for group meetings and weddings.
Adjoining the shoin is a traditional teahouse occasionally used for demonstrations of the tea ceremony. A low water basin and bamboo water spout are reminders that tea garden guests were expected to cleanse their bodies and spirits before crawling into the teahouse through a small opening to show the proper degree of humility.
Bridges are numerous and vary in design, purpose and materials. Some are for crossing over ponds, others span cascading waterfalls. Perhaps the most intriguing among the bridges of the Japanese Garden is the yatsuhashi or zigzag bridge built of eight wooden planks to provide safe passage over a marsh dense with iris plantings. The scene, celebrated in poems and paintings, is derived from the 11th Century Tale of Ise about a man in search of a better place to relocate his family.
Other artful garden features include authentic Kasuga and Yukimi carved granite lanterns and black pines shaped in bonsai style to express the quality of maturity and age, although the trees themselves may still be very young.
The garden requires a staff of five full-time gardeners to plant, prune, weed and train the plants, and each year bonsai and garden style pruners of the Southern California Gardeners Federation are summoned to help preserve the original forms visualized by Kawana.
The Japanese Garden is located at the City of Los Angeles’ Donald C. Tillman Plant, 6100 Woodley Ave., Van Nuys. Tours of the garden and reclamation plant are conducted weekly by appointment only. For reservations call (818) 989-8166.
