Japanese Gardens - Gravel

Japanese garden design - Everything you need to know about Japanese Gardens

In some formal gardens three dimensional features have been created in gravel. Cones, truncated cones and raised areas can be found. It is quite possible to see how producing a cone would follow logically from tipping gravel particularly if one group of workers were involved in bringing the material into the garden and another team with spreading it. Some positive design input probably took place, but establishing a form was probably a natural progression from depositing material.

At the high mountain garden there is a raised block of gravel which covers a considerable area. The question of course is why anyone should create a raised mound of gravel. As the site is on the side of a hill and the garden contains several ponds it would not seem unreasonable to assume that the raised area sits either on an area of exposed bedrock or covers the spoil from one of the lakes. It would seem highly unlikely that the area was formed in pure chippings. The cost of making chippings would always have been high. The only other possibility is that the mound was formed from old material which was capped with a little additional clean material.

Grass was always the major surfacing material around the larger palaces. However the paths and area immediately adjacent to the building were always gravelled. This is perfectly logical and no different to palaces in other countries. Hampton Court and Versailles for example have always been surrounded by large areas of gravel. Originally the gravel would have been extracted from a local river. Gravel was always preferable to sand as it was free draining and less prone to puddling.

It is difficult to walk on rounded gravel as it tends to move around under foot, but shattered gravel is much more stable. The pebbles would have been cracked to produce a sharp material which would consolidate. This would have been a much easier intellectual route than smashing blocks of stone into small pieces. In mountainous areas some rock would have been cut away during building work. This would have provided partially shattered stone for recycling.

More recently pieces of flat stone were set into gravelled areas to make walking easier. Around palaces and temples open rain water gutters were formed in stone. However the sparcity of sedimentary deposits meant that paving, such as York Stone, would not have been readily available.

It was common practice in Japan to build a palace after the death of the Emperor. A new structure would house a new ruler. As a result there were a large number of high quality residential buildings which were regularly downgraded in importance. In the absence of a large maintenance staff the character of the environment around these buildings would have changed very rapidly. Raking over the grounds each day to ensure that there were no leaves, or weeds took a great deal of labour. Without the requirement to maintain a high security regime why bother.

In any residential complex, however large, a number of desire lines always develop as people move about freely. Having large gravelled areas around buildings allows any number of desire lines to be accommodated. The careful positioning of boulders and/or plants would have been a way to channel traffic as well as directing the human eye. Even today landscape designers frequently use gravel beds set between lawns or paving to create visual contrasts. It is quite possible to see how large areas of gravel could be set about buildings to achieve a decorative effect or to define the cartilage. Also in mountainous areas rocky outcrops would have projected through the ground and in the course of creating gardens would have been left exposed as a feature.

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