savor — guide to food & dining on the azalea coast
79
Japanese
Teahouse Garden
The gardens surrounding the New Hanover
County Cooperative Extension Arboretum teahouse
are designed in the traditional Japanese style, which
recreates the outside world in miniature form. In
Japan, particularly within more urban cities, people
design gardens in their courtyards to recreate a
scene, or a miniature version of what their home
was like, says garden designer and horticulturist
Mark Weekley.
In the gardens of the arboretum, the trees
represent the mountains, holly represents the
foothills and the shrubs represent snow. The flowers
were designed to have different bloom times so that
it looks like snow melting down the mountains.
“I’ve had a love of Japanese gardens for a long
time, and I’ve read and studied on them forever,”
Weekley says.
This garden is a study in green, so that there’s still
texture and interest even when there are no flowers
blooming. The two major plants are azaleas and
Japanese maples, along with lots of other plants
native to Japan such as pittosporum.
The gardens are very manicured. When caring for
the garden, Weekley says, “You can’t help but get
lost in your thoughts when you’re taking care of it,
because it’s very focused. It’s almost a meditative
type of thing.”
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