No leaves are allowed to lie, no sticks or stones to encumber any spot the landscape artist has not marked for them. All is as of Nature, but of an enriched and elegant sort, exquisitely spontaneous. Kyoto has numbers of such places—to Japanese eyes no longer as well groomed as their makers planned; the clipping is not so frequent; the bloom of Azalea may be seen where the rounded close green alone should show; but, to Western ideas, they are not less lovely for the sweet abandon of their dress.
Kodaiji, designed by the great landscape artist, Kobori Enshu, to suggest, in little, the Garden of Paradise, is such a place, and all the year there is something to admire and love there. Two great Pines are appropriately guarding the gateway, wishing long life to the garden and all that enter there.
In China, the temple grounds on the arid hills are the only cool and green oases where trees are to be found. In Japan, where beautiful trees are seen everywhere, they seem even bigger and fairer in these religious retreats, and the Fir trees, in particular, the Pines, the Cryptomerias, and the Hemlocks, are very imposing.
A Cherry tree, just inside this garden, droops in spring with its delicate rosy blooms, and displays its beauty of flower and twigs and trunk against the conifer’s deep green. Through another gate one may examine studiously the two charming lakes, the pretty islands (one the
