"Bring the art and beauty of Japan to your garden with inspiration from
Kyoto Gardens."
--HGTV Gardens
Featuring beautiful Japanese garden photography and insightful writing,
Kyoto Gardens is a labor of love from master photographer Ben Simmons
and Kyoto-based writer Judith Clancy. In their rocks and plants, empty
spaces and intimate details--Kyoto's gardens manifest a unique ability
to provoke thought and delight in equal measure. These varied landscapes
meld the sensuality of nature with the disciplines of cosmology, poetry
and meditation. Japanese aristocrats created these gardens to display
not just wealth and power, but cultural sensitivity and an appreciation
for transcendent beauty. A class of professional gardeners eventually
emerged, transforming Japanese landscape design into a formalized art.
Today, Kyoto's gardens display an enormous range of forms--from rock
gardens display of extreme minimalism and subtle hues, to stroll gardens
of luscious proportions and vibrant colors.
In Kyoto Gardens Simmons' photographs present a fresh and contemporary
look at Kyoto's most important gardens. Their beauty is enhanced and
humanized by gardeners tending the grounds using the tools of their art.
Clancy's graceful text provides historical, aesthetic and cultural
context to the Japanese gardens. Combining wonder and rigor, she
describes how Kyoto's most beloved gardens remain faithful to their
founders' creative spirit and conception. Journey to Kyoto's thirty
gardens with just a turn of a page, or use the handy maps to plan your
trip.
