Chinese gardens - Serenity, and the importance of an open center

With the latest scientific manuscript written and submitted I can at last return (with relief) to the contemplation of gardens, and to some final thoughts on the gardens of Suzhou though I have now been home these few weeks.

I have continued to ponder, since returning, the vaunted 'serenity' of oriental gardens. Chinese gardens are as ornamented and decorated as a Victorian parlor. It is definitely a maximal, rather than minimal, approach to the landscape. So whence the calm?

As I traversed these gardens, I found that my view was being constantly cast into an open center, which was most often a pool of water, the best example being at the Master of the Nets garden, below. See how the view *away* from the center is continually blocked by the walls and rockeries?

It's a bit hypnotic, as if you're circling at the edge of a whirlpool. The smaller the garden, the more compelling it feels. When I walked round a garden for a second or third time I would often be struck by features I had totally missed before, because my gaze had been turned only into the center. As seen on the map, even secondary and minor courtyards, without water, have a strong open center, with the busy-ness of rockwork and plantings and seating swept back against the walls.

These open centers actually serve as a negative focal point, guiding the eye in to an empty, and serene, space.

It puts me in mind, actually, of the Grecian fields at Stowe, which acts as the same sort of open center for a much larger landscape. The genius of the natural stylings of William Kent and Capability Brown in England was due less to their famed clumping of trees and more to the remaining empty (negative) spaces that these arrangements created.

Because barring quantum effects (and I speak here as a scientist, not as a garden historian) the negative space is the part of the garden that WE are in (and if you're experiencing quantum effects in your garden you should definitely let me know) .

China has made me much more aware of the importance of shaping negative space.