Time and the Garden
T
ime is a garden design element often
overlooked. We’re most apt to view time
in terms of seasons, focusing on how to
have continuous blooms as spring transitions
through summer and fall—or how to make our
gardens more attractive in late fall and winter,
when deciduous plants have lost their leaves
and flowers are few or absent. Yet we forget to
consider how gardens change over the years
or anticipate how quickly nature—or our own
actions—can sabotage our designs. We’d be
wise to heed Patricia Thorpe’s warning that
all gardens “need serious reassessment and
replanting every seven to 10 years.”
Unlike paths, walls and other hardscape,
which are fixed in position and deteriorate slowly,
plantings are in a constant state of flux—and are
never truly finished artifacts. Even relatively
simple, naturalistic gardens will soon decline if
6 v Washington Park Arboretum Bulletin
B y C o r i nn e K e nn e d y
we’re not committed to maintaining them. The
focus of this entry in the “Elements of Design”
series is on planting design: how plantings evolve
over years and decades, and how to maintain our
original design intent.
The photos I’ve chosen are from the Seattle
Japanese Garden at Washington Park Arboretum,
designed in 1959 by landscape architect Juki Iida
to express the Japanese principles of natural-
ness and the way natural elements age and spread.
Unlike Western gardens—with their extended
periods of bloom—Japanese gardens acknowl-
edge and celebrate the fleeting nature of beauty
and the changes that take place both season-
ally and over many years. Although the Japanese
Garden is a relatively large and specialized
public garden, the strategies it uses to address
the complexities of time can be applied to home
gardens of any size or design style.