I have for many years had a great interest in Japanese garden design – and in particular the more rustic style of tea garden (roji) and tea house or hut (sōan) which dates back to the sixteenth century. Now that we have a largely undeveloped garden space and, more important, the time to spend on developing it, it seemed appropriate to try to put some of those design elements into practice.
A large part of this website is dedicated to describing this project. It is very much a work in progress and currently at a fairly early stage and the website will typically only get updated when weather rules out work on the tea house and garden. But in any case this is a long-term project which may take several years and some design decisions should not be rushed.
The project is also not necessarily being progressed in the most logical order. The lake-side traditional bamboo fence (ryōanji-gaki) was built first to hide an unsightly existing fence of concrete posts and wire mesh. And a first attempt at a winding path (roji no michi) is also already in place, for no good reason other than to try out an overall shape to the space. But the tea house is now the main priority, since this will establish the primary focus and purpose of the tea garden, and is currently the major part of this website. Other elements, including planting, rocks and further fences and gates, will happen later.
Finally let us emphasise that we are really only enthusiastic amateurs when it comes to tea garden design and there will be aspects which some will find unsatisfactory. But there is no one prescribed design and some compromises have had to be made for reasons of practicality or cost. Wherever relevant I have included a number of images of existing tea gardens and tea houses plus other references which have inspired and informed our project. We have also recently joined the Japanese Garden Society and look forward to the ideas, suggestions and constructive criticisms of our colleagues and others.