Thank goodness for the bonsai tree.
If it weren’t for the popularity of miniature planting having spread to the United States, the Far East’s legendary culture of gardening would still be a mystery to most of us.
The Anderson Japanese Gardens in Rockford, Illinois, utilize the power of great landscape design to give Westerners a much broader understanding of both the culture and its philosophies. More than three decades of cultivation have led to a series of gardens and structures, including a teahouse and 16th-century, Sukiya-style guesthouse, spread over 14 acres and reflecting ancient and modern Japanese approaches to gardenscapes. It all culminates in one of the most authentic Japanese gardens in the world.
Anderson was not developed as an arboretum or botanical garden; its focus is not on flowering plants. While warm weather certainly brings tree peonies, flowering crab apples, Yoshino cherries, blossoming rhododendrons, azaleas, and Siberian and Japanese irises, the Japanese gardening style actually focuses on shapes, textures and shades of trees and shrubs. That careful study of landscape was inspired by John Anderson’s love of Japanese culture, learned while traveling overseas for business.
Now, more than 30,000 visitors a year are able to develop their own appreciation, thanks to such awe-inspiring garden sights as the West Waterfall: a five-story structure with a wall base made of 20 tons of steel, and constructed of 700 tons of boulders, over which 1,600 gallons of water circulate each minute. Long looks at the reflecting pools reveal hundreds of Japanese koi and Chinese grass carp, as well as large-mouth bass, bluegill, crayfish and turtles. And in the guesthouse, an ancient Japanese tea ritual is held, interrupted only by the chirping of birds and wind rustling through the manicured tree leaves.