A JAPANESE GARDEN IN SCOTLAND DESIGNED BY A JAPANESE WOMAN IN 1908 (明治の日本人女性が設計したスコットランドの日本庭園)

Several months ago, Itsuko-san, my classmate of English conversation class, gave me a newspaper-clipping introducing a Japanese Garden designed in early 20th century.

In the article, it was written that a Japanese woman who learned horticulture at Studley College (Warwickshire) in England designed a Japanese garden at Cowden Castle in Scotland in 1908.  Her name is Taki Handa.  She was born in 1871 at Kurume City in Kyusyu Island.  Kurume City is very close to my home town.  I was really surprised to know that a Japanese woman made a Japanese garden in Scotland more than 100 years ago!

I researched about this amazing story, and I found a  report written by her granddaughter in Japanese (unfortunately this report is not available on internet).  She was a teacher of English and Horticulture of a woman's collage in Kyoto, a mother of children, a wife of an army surgeon and a manager of a fruit farm.

Two papers about her are available on internet 

 

1) Revisiting Japanese horticulturist, Taki Handa's studying Britain in early 20th century: family history and life history / life geography (園芸家半田たきの明治後期の英国留学  家族史とライフヒストリー／ライフジオグラフィーの視点から)

2) スコットランド・コーデン城日本庭園の成立について

I found a English web page (here) which introduces the Japanese Garden of Cowden Castle in Scotland.

If you are interested in her, please visit web site shown above.  You can look at many photos of the woman, the garden and related people.

English Garden

A story about the bench in our garden

When we first visited UK in 2010 as members of a garden tour in England from Japan, we met many impressive scenes of gardens.  Before departure, I saw one photograph of a bench in a latest issue at that time of magazine 'Bises' (one of the most popular gardening magazines).

A photo in Bises magazine 2010

In the afternoon of the first day of visiting gardens, We went to Mottisfont Abbey Rose Garden.

Guide map at the entrance

The house of Mottisfont Abbey beyond meadow flowers

We walked along a river and through meadow with big trees to the walled garden, which houses the national collection of old fashioned rose designed by Graham Stuart Thomas, and at last we found the bench with flowering 'Constance Spry'.  It was really glorious and we stood still for a few minutes.

Edwardian 4 Seater Bench painted White

My wife 'Marple'

We also found another bench with light yellow roses.  I suppose this is 'Lady Hillingdon', but I'm not sure. 

Another White Edwardian bench.  Now I'm using this photo as a icon of POIROT at the Bises photo gallery (http://www.bises.co.jp/photo/)

I sat on this bench

After we came back, we started re-planning our garden.  We found a young garden designer who had learned gardening in UK for a year. She designed the brick wall and terrace.  We bought a new lutyens teak garden bench instead of Edwardian one, because　we thought that the former is more natural and match well to our garden, and it was more economical :-)

Renewed garden in January 2011

My wife and the garden designer at the new bench

Three years has passed since the renewal, and the bench color has changed to more natural color.

The bench has become well-matched there (May 2014)