Synopses & Reviews
The gardens made on the fringes of Central Asia in the past 5000 years form a great arc. From the Fertile Crescent, it runs west to Europe and east to China and Japan. Asia's fringe was a zone of interchange: a vast landscape in which herders encountered farmers and the design of symbolic gardens began. It appears that as they became settlers, nomads retained a love of mobility, hunting and the wild places in which their ancestors had roamed. Central Asian and Indian ideas influenced the garden culture of China, Japan and South East Asia.
In West Asia, Aryan settlers made hunting parks known as paradises. They were walled enclosures stocked with exotic plants and animals. In East Asia, great landscape parks were used for similar purposes and had a sacred role. Across Asia, gardens were influenced by religious and other beliefs: polytheist, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Daoist, Shinto and Modernist. Early parks and gardens symbolized wild and civilized nature, sometimes conceived as the realms of the Sky God and the Earth Mother. Asian Gardens: History, Beliefs and Design explores the ways in which designs were guided by beliefs.
Tom Turner has been researching and teaching the theory and history of garden design for some forty years. His visits, research, drawings and photographs are brought together in detailed studies of West Asia, South Asia and East Asia. The period covered extends from the earliest gardens to the present. Using maps, diagrams and photographs, the author explores how and why Asian gardens developed their characteristic forms and functions. Treating garden design as a 'word and image' subject, the account is coherent, comparative and readable. Further details of all the gardens are available on the gardenvisit.com website, which the author edits.
Synopsis
For five thousands years, from 3000 BCE to 2000 CE, many great gardens have been made on the edges of Central Asia. They form a belt which, from the Fertile Crescent of Mesapotania, extends westward into Europe and eastward into China. It was a zone of interchange, a landscape in which horsemen encountered farmers and the design of symbolic gardens began.
When nomads became settlers, they retained a love of mobility, hunting and wild landscapes. In Iran Aryan settlers made a type of space which they called a paradise - a walled enclosure used for hunting and stocked with exotic plants and animals. The same occured with the great landscape parks of ancient China and survives today in the use of the word 'paradise' in Islam and Christianity. At the same time settled farmers began to make formal gardens that celebrated and worshipped those things which made their civilisations possible. Thus these gardens symbolized wild nature and civilized nature, the realms of the Sky God and the Earth Mother.
Tom Turner has researched and taught the philosophy and design of gardens for forty years. His visits, his investigations and his photography are all brought together in this detailed study of the history of gardens across Asia, from Turkey through Iran, India, China to Japan, from the very beginnings of garden making to the present day. Using maps, diagrams and photographs, Tom Turner demonstrates the principles of garden design, and explores how and why Asian gardens have developed their characteristic forms and functions.