Chinese Garden at the Montreal Botanical Garden

Rustic and asymmetrical at first glance, the Montreal Chinese Garden was nonetheless created according to rigorous esthetic principles. It is both a place of contrast and harmony. The spatial organization and pavilions' architecture, the selection of plants and minerals, the water and the contrast of yin and yang are all expressions of the secular principles of the Chinese art of landscape design.
Chinese gardens play havoc with perspectives and Western conventions. Their components are laden with great metaphorical meaning. A designer reproduces nature not by imitating it, but rather by interpreting it, by creating a three-dimensional portrait. Shapes and masses are used to achieve contrast and arouse emotion.
Create harmony between architecture and nature
The Chinese garden is the fruit of bonds forged between the Parks Department of the City of Shanghai and the Jardin botanique de Montréal. The thousands of pieces of material needed to build the garden were shipped from Shanghai to Montréal in some 120 containers. It took 50 Chinese craftsmen to assemble them all in 1990.
The concept of the garden was the work of Le Weizhong, renowned architect and master landscaper and the director, at the time of construction during 1990-1991, of the Shanghai Institute of Landscape Design and Architecture.
The harmony of a Chinese garden is achieved by four major elements: plants, water, stones, and architecture. It was just about the last thing I expected on a short visit to Montreal last October: a Chinese Garden. In Europe we’ve been used to Chinoiserie for over 300 years but while some examples are genuine imitations [if that makes sense] most are really just, at best, bastardised forms of Chinese architecture and design, whilst at worst they are comical misuses of the form and details…. and none of them are gardens.
I should say at the outset too that I knew nothing about Chinese gardens, and even now I still only know next to nothing. After all, while we have plenty of Japanese gardens in Britain I can’t think of a single Chinese one.
When I was writing this, obviously without access to the British Library, I turned to Maggie Keswick’s The Chinese Garden which I bought shortly after it came out in 1978 [how to make yourself feel old!] She grew up in China and was a regular visitor as an adult, visiting many historic gardens there, and did huge amounts of research. The book is full of insights into what for most westerners is an unknown world.
Let me quote from the preface: “Whoever heard anything special about Chinese gardens? Even in the East they are something of a lost art form; in the West the words seldom conjure up any image at all - or if they do it is likely to be one of a Japanese garden with its exquisite arrangements of moss and stone, its manicured pines and dry streams, and above all, its sense of being so perfect in itself … Chinese gardens are not like this.” How true that is, so be prepared for a surprise or two…
Like a good tourist I went to Montreal’s wonderful botanical garden, but like a bad tourist I didn’t do any research beforehand so the first time I realised the Chinese Garden existed was when I saw the signposts shortly after entering. It’s almost completely invisible behind screening hedges and trees, but there’s a giveaway: an array of colourful red lanterns and other “sculptures” in the form of birds and animals dotted around in the flower beds and lawns.
Inwardly I groaned because they reminded me instantly of the inflatable monstrosities that have been inflicted on several historic gardens in Britain recently, most noticeably at Chiswick which I railed about on here. But I gritted my teeth my teeth and carried on. Was it going to be more frowns of incredulity that anyone could do this? Or was this going to be something different?
The sight of this massive pitted and eroded rock, the wizened pine tree and the surrounding sea of bright yellowy-green sedum was slightly more reassuring…
As the path turned through the trees and the first pavilion appeared the doubts began to disappear.
We were, the information panel said, ” about to enter an authentic Chinese garden designed to resemble the private garden of a mandarin in Ming-era [14th to 17thc] southern China