Chinese Landscape Gardening

Green gardens are important to environmental protection, people’s leisure-time recreations, material creation and the improvement of artistic appearance of places where they are built. The art of gardening, on its part, plays a significant role in cultivating spiritual well-being and inheriting fine cultural traditions. Therefore, garden building is an indispensable part in city modernization.

As the most important element in modern gardens in china, plants not only occupy 60 percent to 70 percent of the garden areas, but also decorate gardens with their colourful and seasonal qualities, enabling the gardens to look more beautiful and attractive. This is the unique quality which other garden elements such as hills, rocks and buildings do not have.
In most of the traditional Chinese royal gardens and private gardens owned by nobles, buildings were the main element. Nevertheless, there had developed a special way to select and arrange plants in the gardens. In garden building in the past 30 years, a series of new and fruitful techniques in plant arrangement have gradually been adopted to meet contemporary needs.

In the past three decades, the author has been doing research on garden building and plant cultivation in and around cities. After surveying, taking pictures of, analyzing and researching on a number of excellent examples of plant arrangement in gardens chozen from the several dozen cities that she has visited, the author has systemized and improved the techniques of plant arrangement by basing herself on traditional techniques and a scientific point of view. The book, with a detailed account of her research achievements, will provide garden designers and researchers with reference materials of practical value.

Contents

Preface
I. History of Chinese Gardens
II. Arrangement of Plantings in Traditional Chinese Gardens
III. Chinese Gardens Today
Chapter one
Garden planting
I. Composition of a Vegetation
II. Central Feature of a Vegetation
III. Composition of Trees
IV. Colours and Seasonal Features of the Plants
V. Ground Arangements
Chapter Two
Plant Arrangements for Garden Paths
I. Characteristics of Plant Arrangements for Garden Paths
II. Artistic Patterns of Plant Arrangements for Garden Paths
III. Plantings for Special Garden Paths
IV. Plantings for Components Parts of a Garden Path
Chapter Three
Plant Arrangements for Water Gardening
I. Plantings for Different Waterscape
II. Waterside Plantings
III. Plantings on Water Surfaces
IV. Artistic Composition of Water Plants
Chapter Four
Plantings for Garden Buildings
I. Plant Arrangements at the Entrance
II. Plantings at the Foot of Buildings
III. Arrangements for Climbing Plants
IV. Plantings for Small Structures
Chapter Five
Flower Beds
I. Types of Flower Beds
II. Designs of Flower Beds
III. Choice and Disposition of Plants for Flower Beds
Chapter Six
Plantings in Courtyards and Gardens
I. Plantings in Courtyards
II. Plantings in Larger Gardens
III. Plantings in Specialized Gardens
IV. Plantings in “Inner Gardens”