This is the kind of book you might give to a committed Japanophile like Larry Ellison, Oracle president and CEO. While professional landscape architect Takashi Sawano does not say whether the corporate samurai spirit fits the bill, he does insist that without a studied appreciation of Japanese aesthetics, any attempt to build a Japanese garden is destined to fail from lack of soul.
And so he sets out to introduce the physical and philosophical elements essential to a Japanese garden, exhorting would-be designers to bear in mind the oldest advice in the book: "Follow nature." He then provides nearly 20 examples of gardens that, as a 25-year resident of England, he was commissioned to design, from indoor nooks to estate expanses to roof gardens.
For the purposes of this book, Sawano focuses on two of the three major garden styles, "karesansui" (dry garden) and "chaniwa" (tea garden).