Cloister garden: Mission style

Today we appreciate cloisters for their ability to create soothing sheltered spaces for observation and contemplation; for providing simple gardens full of the useful flowers, vegetables and medicinal herbs; and for including water, essential for life.  These elements create a powerful contrast to the 24/7 pace of the modern world. 

Historically, the cloister garden also played an important role in protecting those inside from physical attack and sustaining them during periods when they could not venture out.  In 800 CE England the cloister provided protection from Vikings.  In 1800 California, missions used the cloister design for protection from the native population.

Indians Refusing to Work at San Luis Rey, by A. Harmer, 1833. Source: California Missions Resource Center.

The garden pictured above is from southern California’s Mission San Luis Rey, in an area that was originally home to the Luiseño people.   The mission was established in 1798 to extend Spain’s colonial claims.  Its purpose was to teach the Luiseño "useful" trade skills and to preach Christianity.  Life for the Luiseño under this scheme was hard and some organized raids on the mission in an attempt to close it.  Fear of attack led to the church that we see on the site today, built in the 1810’s.

Master stonemason Antonio Ramirez designed and oversaw the construction, with Luiseño converts doing the work.  The main walls of the church were 30 feet high and five feet thick.  The garden is set inside the mission compound.  Framed by deep covered walkways, there is a central well for access to water, areas for planting useful herbs, food, and flowers, and a grassy area where a few animals could be sheltered.

In 1830, the mission was the largest building in California.  3,000 Luiseño’s managed 50,000 livestock, and tended to crops of grapes, oranges, olives, wheat, and corn. 

Mission restorer Father Joseph O’Keefe. Library of Congress 

Disease played a key role in the loss of nearly half of the Luiseño population.  Cave Couts, a prominent cattleman wrote to a friend in 1862, "Small pox is quite prevalent… six to eight per day are being buried --Indians generally." (From Richard Crawford’s “Fatal Funeral: Rancher Recounts 1863 Killing Over Fear of Smallpox”, LA Times.)

The mission fell into ruins in the 1850's and its restoration began with the arrival of Franciscan Father Joseph O’Keefe.  Today the site is a National Historic Landmark and houses the Franciscan School of Theology, which prepares priests and lay women and men for shared ministry in the Catholic Church.  

See more cloister garden stories here.

 

Mission founder Father Antonio Peyri. Source: San Diego History Center.

Source: San Luis Rey Historic Foundation

Details make the garden

Entering the Japanese Friendship Garden in San Diego is like moving into another world.  For starters, the garden is quiet and uncongested.  Unlike other parts of Balbao Park, it requires an admission fee, so only the committed enter.  With the bustle of the larger park- roller bladers, cyclists, Frisbee throwers – left behind, I was drawn in by a simple curving path.

One of the first design elements that encouraged me to pause is the simple water feature pictured above.  A few pieces of bamboo guide a small stream of water onto a large rock where it splashes, overflows and disappears into the smaller pebbles. 

Though beautiful by itself, this feature is actually a highly intentional ornament. It is called Tsukubai – a basin used for ritual cleansing.  The cup sitting on the largest rock is used to collect water from the basin for a three step cleansing process: first for the hands - to cleanse the body; second to sip - to cleanse the spirit; and third, to clean the cup itself for the next person.

 

Garden rock and roll

While cloister and Islamic gardens were being built in Europe in the middle ages, Zen priests were creating dry rock gardens or kare sansui in East Asia.  Designed to facilitate Buddhist meditation, these metaphorical, highly edited and compressed landscape gardens used raked sand or gravel to represent churning water and large rocks as islands and mountains.  

Kare sansui gardens are meant to be viewed from a single bench.  Seated, one could truly pause and reflect.  This type of garden-making became popular when the nobility and military upper class incorporated its style into their own gardens.  

I was really struck by the dry landscape garden at San Diego's Friendship Garden at Balbao Park pictured above.  It consists of 7 large rocks, imported from Japan, set in a sea of raked gravel.  The garden is well placed next to an exhibit house with a viewing bench. 

In Priscilla Lister’s article “Park’s Japanese Friendship Garden Grows Tranquility,” she explains the somber back story behind this garden, which began as a tea house and garden:

 “…the original Japanese tea house in Balboa Park … was built for the Panama-California Exposition in 1915…  [when] the city couldn’t maintain the operation after the exposition, a Japanese couple, Hachisaku and Osamu Asakawa, managed it until 1941. When the U.S. entered World War II that year, the Asakawas, along with other Japanese-Americans were interned during the war...  Left to deteriorate, the teahouse was finally razed in 1955…“

It wasn’t until 1990 that the Japanese garden was re-established in Balbao Park. 

Today 100,000 people visit this 2-acre garden each year.  It is so popular that an additional 9 acre expansion is set to open in 2015.  A must-see during any visit to San Diego.