Lecture Series
The Year of the Healing Garden Lecture Series
I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more.
- John Burroughs, American naturalist (1837-1921)
Throughout history, gardens have been regarded as a source of comfort and healing for mind and body for people in cultures around the world. For almost half a century, the Portland Japanese Garden has served as a place of a refuge for members of this community in times of physical, mental and emotional stress. Working with partners at Legacy Health, National College of Natural Medicine, and Yoga Pearl, the Garden will explore the role of gardens as places of healing through related exhibitions, guest lectures by horticultural therapists and experts from Western and Eastern medical traditions, wellness programs, morning yoga sessions, and other activities.
Upcoming
Gardens and Healing with Teresia Hazen
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
5:30-7 p.m.
Pavilion Gallery
$10 members / $15 non-members
Reservations open June 19 @ 8 a.m.
Throughout history, gardens have been regarded as a source of comfort and healing for body, mind and soul in cultures around the world. Gardens and green spaces throughout the community have a role in the healing, health and wellness of our community members.
Teresia Hazen, Horticultural Therapist and Coordinator of Therapeutic Gardens at Legacy Health, and three of her colleagues, including a doctor, a nurse, and a social worker, will discuss from their own experience the many benefits of gardens in the healing process. They will end their presentation with a hands-on activity to bring home the healing quality of nature.
Mike Houck:
Gardens and the Community
Thursday, October 25, 2012
5:30-7 p.m.
Details TBA
Past Japanese Garden Lectures
Gardens Below the Watchtower
with Landscape Architect Anna Tamura
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Gardens created by Japanese American inmates in World War II incarceration camps offer insights into a little known, but very moving story of how people coped with the psychological trauma of imprisonment during the War in part by creating Japanese gardens. With unparalleled dedication and extremely limited resources, inmates who had worked as landscape gardeners for residences along the West Coast before the War went to great lengths to create remarkable gardens of stones and plant materials laboriously collected in the landscape around them. Both the labor of love and the resulting touch of beauty they brought to their desolate environment helped them to heal in the midst of these devastating circumstances. The gardens successfully buffered the monotony of the military issue barracks and barbed wire, as they buffered the psychological and physical trauma of the incarceration experience.
The U.S. government assigned renowned American photographer Ansel Adams to document life in the internment camps during WW II, and Tamura’s presentation is richly illustrated with a selection of his black and white photographs.
Anna Tamura is a landscape architect at the National Park Service in Seattle, Washington. She received her Master of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Art at Bard College. She is currently engaged in researching and planning for historic cultural landscapes for the Park Service, with a focus on the development of former internment camps at Manzanar and Minidoka as future National Parks to bring them to public attention and ensure that this sad chapter in U.S. history does not repeat itself in the future.
Andy Couturier:
A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance
October 27, 2011
Author and writing teacher Andy Couturier introduces ideas and people from his book A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance. Raised in the tumult of Japan’s industrial powerhouse, the eleven men and women profiled have made the transition to sustainable, deeply fulfilling lives in the mountains of Japan. Published in 2010, this book is a treasure chest of stories about real people in Japan who have created an abundance of time for contemplation, connecting with nature, artistic practice, and contributing to their communities.
Andy Couturier is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer and the author of Writing Open the Mind. He has contributed to Adbusters, MIT Press, The Oakland Tribune, The Japan Times, Kyoto Journal, Creative Nonfiction, and The North American Review. Couturier lived in Japan for four years where he taught, was a journalist, and worked on environmental causes. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and runs a center for courses in writing: The Opening.
Healing Nature
Vince Healy:
Sensory Engagement and “Sense of Place”
June 30, 2011
The restorative qualities of nature are evident perhaps nowhere more beautifully in Portland than in the tranquil setting of the Portland Japanese Garden. As a follow-up to this year’s Living in Harmony with Nature theme, next year in 2012, Art in the Garden and the Garden Lecture series will explore the role of the garden as a vehicle of restorative therapies. This summer, a special lecture on “Healing Nature” by noted expert Vince Healy, sets the tone for the coming year by providing a definition of “healing” and “restorative” gardens, and discussing some of the many ways in which multi-sensory experience in garden settings can benefit healing.
Mr. Healy holds a BFA from the University of California, Irvine, an MFA from UCLA, and was a Loeb Fellow at The Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is the author of several journal articles, and has counseled authors writing books on the healing properties of garden environments.
Underwritten in part by the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation, and by Legacy Health System.
Art in the Garden opening lecture
Author Azby Brown:
Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan
January 28, 2011
Read more…
Botond Bognar:
Beyond the Bubble—Current Trends in Japanese Architecture
October 21, 2010
The Garden is honored to present a lecture on new directions in Japanese architecture by Professor Botond Bognar, the Edgar A. Tafel Chair in Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Born in Budapest, he is the pre-eminent international scholar on the history and theories of contemporary Japanese architecture and urbanism. A licensed architect, Professor Bognar is the author of numerous authoritative books on Japan’s top 20th and 21st century architects, architectural history and Japanese aesthetics.
Hoichi Kurisu:
The Japanese Garden in the 21st Century—An Evolving Art of Healing
July 22, 2010
This talk will focus on the continuing evolution in the field of Japanese garden design and construction—an area in which Mr. Kurisu is a master.
Former Garden Director of the Portland Japanese Garden, Hoichi Kurisu is one of the most respected Japanese garden designers in the world. Owner of Kurisu International, Mr. Kurisu was a principal designer of the Morikami Gardens in Florida, the Anderson Japanese Gardens in Illinois, and the roof garden on the Contemporaine in Chicago—among many others. Over the last 20 years, his practice has focused on the creation of what we know today as “restorative or healing gardens” at various healthcare facilities throughout the US.
Mr. Kurisu is responsible for many significant contributions to the beauty of the Portland Japanese Garden, including the superbly executed reconstruction of the waterfall in the Garden’s Lower Pond after it suffered major damage in a landslide in the 1990s. According to Garden Curator Sadafumi Uchiyama, “Hoichi Kurisu refers to his Japanese gardens as ‘Gardens of Vision…for Lives of Insight,’ an approach that has evolved and been refined over the past 30 years. His efforts are now crystallized into ‘Restorative Gardens’ that all of us are
longing for in this chaotic world.” Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from one of the Portland Japanese Garden’s former Garden Directors, and one of the most revered landscapers in the world.
Talon Buchholz:
The Wonderful World of Japanese Maples
April, 2010
Owner and president of Buchholz & Buchholz Nursery and the Flora Wonder™ Arboretum, Buchholz is a wholesale grower of Japanese maples, dwarf and unusual conifers, and other choice ornamental trees and shrubs. He’ll speak about his long experience with developing new varieties of Japanese maples— how they are selected, trialed, and introduced.
Talon’s nursery fosters an environment where the discovery, trial, and introduction of new species and cultivars are a principal focus. Many Buchholz introductions are grown across the United States and Canada as well as Europe and Japan; and many choice new plants from abroad are first made available to Americans by Buchholz & Buchholz Nursery. Mr. Buchholz and his staff enjoy close relationships and plant sharing with some of the world’s greatest growers of plants.
Ron Herman:
In Search of an Unknown Garden
March 18, 2010
Landscape architect and author Ron Herman talks about his remarkable career in garden design and the influence of Japan on his work. Author of the highly regarded A Guide to the Gardens of Kyoto, Ron spent several years studying in Japan and has designed many of North America’s largest and most intricate private gardens. He has created more than 400 full-scale garden designs in his 35+ year career in landscape architecture, including the 25-acre Japanese style village of California software billionaire Lawrence Ellison, as well as several large estates throughout the country. His presentation will also focus on his ongoing research on Shugakuin Imperial Villa in Kyoto, the study of which has become a central theme in Ron’s career.
Sean Hogan Speaks on Japanese and Asian Plants
January 28, 2010
The Garden is pleased to welcome Sean Hogan, author of Trees for All Seasons: Broadleaved Evergreens for Temperate Climates. Sean is the co-founder of Cistus Design in Portland, Oregon, a nursery world-famous for its collection of rare plants and display gardens. More than half the entries in Sean’s book are of Japanese or Asian origin, the topic he will address in his January lecture. Sean was formerly a horticulturist at the University of California, Berkeley Botanic Garden, where he managed the New World Desert, as well as Australia/ New Zealand, Africa, and California-cultivar gardens.
