There was a speech made by Mr. Zhao who is a landscape architect in our school on December 1st. all the students in grade 10 listened to him and learnt a lot about garden designing. He talked about gardens in China first. The garden in china is called “Yuan” and it includes four different parts. The garden is considered as an area which has walls around it. And the area must have the transformation in geographical features. Also the garden must include water and hills to become more natural. This is very important in china while in western country, it is known as a paradise with boundaries. And the definition of garden in dictionary is an area with hills, rocks, water and plants which is designed by someone. After that, he focused on introducing gardens in Suzhou in china. Gardens in Suzhou can be divided into four different kinds. They are imperial gardens, private gardens, temple gardens and scenery gardens. Suzhou is a noisy city and Suzhou garden is a peaceful place in a brawl place. Suzhou garden is very famous not only for its beauty, but also people can see Chinese culture and history from it. Many scholars in different times in China lived in the gardens and the special environment brought up the people.
The general art features of Suzhou garden is divide water and mountain into different parts. Water and mountains are very important in Chinese style gardens. Actually, the hills and mountains are all made of different kinds of rocks. And rocks have four characteristics. They are designed to be thin, and with many holes and creases. Many famous people found their values and goals of their lives.
A big mountain is often made of many small, tiny rocks and stones. The artists often stick them together into a bigger one which is considered as a mountain. And the mountains are usually arranged in the doorway so people who came into the garden can first see the mountain. This is Chinese custom and it is known as lucky to see the mountain first.
Water in the garden is alive. The water is come from somewhere outside the garden and he water must match the mountains because it seems to be more natural. And the rule is that one pond matches with three hills.
I totally agree with him because I think mountains and water are the symbols of nature and the garden is a place which people can get closer with nature. And I love Chinese style garden very much.
