Japanese Rock Garden Design – Edina Minnesota Landscape Company

April 27, 2007

The elegant simplicity of a Japanese rock garden was the perfect compliment to this office complex located in Edina Minnesota. We designed the steps using a comfortable tread riser relationship with the third step flowing beyond the stairs and becoming the cap of the sitting wall. This means that the elevation of the third tread matches the top of the sitting wall and that the thickness of the concrete cap is the same as the riser dimension of the step, clean, simple and elegant.

Within the new planter we vertically set three large specimen stones, creating an ishi-gumi, or iwa-gumi arrangement. These stones were hand selected for our Japanese stone garden and installed with the use of a crane. Even with a crane installing stones of this size, especially vertically is difficult and must be done with great care. We planted the garden with single stem Amur maple trees, Japanese Yew, Pachysandra and Hosta.

After completing the East entry we were hired to design and build an employee break area on the south side of the building for the anchor tenant. We presented a concept plan with a spacious concrete patio built on top of ±48” of compacted fill. To ensure that the patio would not settle we also installed concrete pilings a few inches below original grade. We then sculpted the banks surrounding the patio forming a crisp plane on each side and planted them with low junipers. A hedge of Apline Currant was planted around the edge of the patio. To access the patio a new door was installed through the exterior wall.

Our third year and third phase of work we designed and built the wave, which was an informal retaining wall that flowed up and down in elevation and in and out in plan view. This project was on the north side of the building improving the view along the drive accessing the employee / tenant parking lot. The new retaining wall and plantings protect the bank from eroding and eliminated the lawn in this area which was hazardous to maintain. The character of the stonework was influenced by retaining walls studied in China and the flow of the wall was inspired by a non literal translation of the “gogan-style” retaining walls found in Japanese gardens. The gogan pattern is often used when edging ponds, streams and / or pathways. The pattern follows a zig-zag principal of positioning stones in and out as well as up and down.

During next phase of work completed the following year we constructed the two limestone retaining walls terminated each end of the wave project. These walls return the character of the landscape work back to the simple, less is more approach. We also removed two solid concrete islands in the east parking lot and constructed two new wider ones. New concrete direct buried light poles with Kim light fixtures were installed in the islands that were then planted with Junipers and Ash trees.

Posted in Asian Gardens, Garden Art, Garden Types, Landscape, Stairs, Stonework