Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Visual Materials
A view of the wooden frame surrounding the Zen garden area of the Japanese garden during its construction. Trees and bushes surround the structure, and a pickup truck is parked within the walls. The Zen garden opened in 1968. On verso: Beginning construction Zen Garden Huntington Botanical Gardens.
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Visual Materials
A view of the stairs leading up to the Zen garden area of the Japanese garden. The Zen garden, at the top of the hill on the right, is surrounded by a wall with sloped tiles along the top. The Zen garden opened in 1968. On verso: Zen Garden Huntington Botanical Gardens. On verso: Japanese Garden Fall, 1968 / Photo : Reinhardt.
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Visual Materials
A view of the wooden pathway and stairs leading from the Zen garden to the main part of the Japanese garden. A gateway at the top of the steps in the distance leads to a courtyard of the Zen garden house. On verso: Japanese Garden : Approach to Zen Garden, 1972. On verso: Staff photo by Margaret Stovall, 1972.
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Rare Books
From the Publisher: The Japanese dry landscape garden has long attracted-and long baffled-viewers from the West. While museums across the United States are replicating these "Zen rock gardens" in their courtyards and miniature versions of the gardens are now office decorations, they remain enigmatic, their philosophical and aesthetic significance obscured. Reading Zen in the Rocks, the classic essay on the karesansui garden by French art historian Francois Berthier, has now been translated by Graham Parkes, giving English-speaking readers a concise, thorough, and beautifully illustrated history of these gardens. Berthier's guided tour of the famous garden of Ryoanji (Temple) in Kyoto leads him into an exposition of the genre, focusing on its Chinese antecedents and affiliations with Taoist ideas and Chinese landscape painting. He traces the roles of Shinto and Zen Buddhism in the evolution of the garden and also considers how manual laborers from the lowest classes in Japan had a hand in creating some of its highest examples. Parkes contributes an equally original and substantive essay which delves into the philosophical importance of rocks and their "language of stone," delineating the difference between Chinese and Japanese rock gardens and their relationship to Buddhism. Together, the two essays compose one of the most comprehensive and elegantly written studies of this haunting garden form. Reading Zen in the Rocks is fully illustrated with photographs of all the major gardens discussed, making it a handsome addition to the library of anyone interested in gardening, Eastern philosophy, and the combination of the two that the karesansui so superbly represents.
Visual Materials
View of a rocky, wooded area of the Japanese garden canyon, with a small stream and waterfall. On verso of print: Water fall Oriental Garden.
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Visual Materials
Looking west across the Japanese garden canyon, where the drum bridge spans one of the ponds, to the house on the west ridge of the garden.
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