Chinese garden

Design of the classical garden

A Chinese garden was not meant to be seen all at once; the plan of a classical Chinese garden presented the visitor with a series of perfectly composed and framed glimpses of scenery; a view of a pond, or of a rock, or a grove of bamboo, a blossoming tree, or a view of a distant mountain peak or a pagoda. The 16th-century Chinese writer and philosopher Ji Cheng instructed garden builders to "hide the vulgar and the common as far as the eye can see, and include the excellent and the splendid."

Some early Western visitors to the imperial Chinese gardens felt they were chaotic, crowded with buildings in different styles, without any seeming order. But the Jesuit priest Jean Denis Attiret, who lived in China from 1739 and was a court painter for the Qianlong Emperor, observed there was a "beautiful disorder, an anti-symmetry" in the Chinese garden. "One admires the art with which this irregularity is carried out. Everything is in good taste, and so well arranged, that there is not a single view from which all the beauty can be seen; you have to see it piece by piece." This spatial irregularity often contrasts with the rigid axial layout of the adjoining residence. In Suzhou's Couple's Garden, the main hall, study, and reception rooms are aligned symmetrically along a north–south axis, while the adjacent garden breaks this order with winding paths, angled pavilions, and rockeries placed to obscure direct sight-lines, creating a sense of natural spontaneity and layered views.

Chinese classical gardens varied greatly in size. The largest garden in Suzhou, the Humble Administrator's Garden, was a little over ten hectares in area, with one fifth of the garden occupied by the pond. But they did not have to be large. Ji Cheng built a garden for Wu Youyu, the Treasurer of Jinling, that was just under one hectare in size, and the tour of the garden was only four hundred steps long from the entrance to the last viewing point, but Wu Youyu said it contained all the marvels of the province in a single place.

The classical garden was surrounded by a wall, usually painted white, which served as a pure backdrop for the flowers and trees. A pond of water was usually located in the center. Many structures, large and small, were arranged around the pond. In the garden described by Ji Cheng above, the structures occupied two-thirds of the hectare, while the garden itself occupied the other third. In a scholar garden the central building was usually a library or study, connected by galleries with other pavilions which served as observation points of the garden features. These structures also helped divide the garden into individual scenes or landscapes. The other essential elements of a scholar garden were plants, trees, and rocks, all carefully composed into small perfect landscapes. Scholar gardens also often used what was called "borrowed" scenery (借景 jiejing); where unexpected views of scenery outside the garden, such as mountain peaks, seemed to be an extension of the garden itself.

Architecture

Chinese gardens are filled with architecture; halls, pavilions, temples, galleries, bridges, kiosks, and towers, occupying a large part of the space. The Humble Administrator's Garden in Suzhou has forty-eight structures, including a residence, several halls for family gatherings and entertainment, eighteen pavilions for viewing different features of the garden, and an assortment of towers, galleries, and bridges, all designed for seeing different parts of the gardens from different points of view. The garden structures are not designed to dominate the landscape, but to be in harmony with it.

Classical gardens traditionally have these structures:

• The ceremony hall (ting), or “room”. A building used for family celebrations or ceremonies, usually with an interior courtyard, not far from the entrance gate.
• The principal pavilion (da ting), or “large room”, for the reception of guests, for banquets and for celebrating holidays, such as New Years and the Festival of Lanterns. It often has a veranda around the building to provide cool and shade.
• The pavilion of flowers (hua ting), or “flower room”. Located near the residence, this building has a rear courtyard filled with flowers, plants, and a small rock garden.
• The pavilion facing the four directions (si mian ting), or “four doors room”. This building has folding or movable walls, for opening up a panoramic view of the garden.
• The lotus pavilion (he hua ting), or “lotus room”. Built next to a lotus pond, to see the flowers bloom and appreciate their aroma.
• The pavilion of mandarin ducks (yuan yang ting), or “mandarin ducks room”. This building is divided into two sections; one facing north used in summer, facing a lotus pond which provided cool air; and the southern part used in winter, with a courtyard planted with pine trees, which remained evergreen, and plum trees, whose blossoms announced the arrival of spring.

In addition to these larger halls and pavilions, the garden is filled with smaller pavilions, (also called ting), or “room”, which are designed for providing shelter from the sun or rain, for contemplating a scene, reciting a poem, taking advantage of a breeze, or simply resting. Pavilions might be located where the dawn can best be watched, where the moonlight shines on the water, where autumn foliage is best seen, where the rain can best be heard on the banana leaves, or where the wind whistles through the bamboo stalks. They are sometimes attached to the wall of another building or sometimes stood by themselves at view points of the garden, by a pond or at the top of a hill. They often are open on three sides.

The names of the pavilions in Chinese gardens express the view or experience they offer the visitor:

• The Peak-Worshipping Pavilion (The Lingering Garden) in Suzhou China
• The Hall of Distant Fragrances (Humble Administrator's Garden) in Suzhou China
• The Mountain View Tower (Humble Administrator's Garden) in Suzhou China
• Pavilion of the Moon and Wind (Master of the Nets Garden) in Suzhou China
• Pavilion in the Lotus Breeze (Humble Administrator's Garden) in Suzhou China
• Listening to the Rain Pavilion (Humble Administrator's Garden) in Suzhou China
• Watching the Pines and Appreciating Paintings Hall (Humble Administrator's Garden) in Suzhou China
• Spot of Return for Reading (Lingering Garden) in Suzhou China
• Between the Mountains and the Water Pavilion (The Couple's Retreat Garden) in Suzhou China
• Pavilion Leaning on the Jade (Humble Administrator's Garden) in Suzhou China
• Soft Rain Brings Coolness Terrace (Retreat & Reflection Garden) in Suzhou China
• Lasting Spring and Moon Viewing Tower (Retreat & Reflection Garden) in Suzhou China

Gardens also often feature two-story towers (lou or ge), usually at the edge of the garden, with a lower story made of stone and a whitewashed upper story, two-thirds the height of the ground floor, which provided a view from above of certain parts of the garden or the distant scenery.

Some gardens have a picturesque stone pavilion in the form of a boat, located in the pond. (called an xie, fang, or shifang). These generally had three parts; a kiosk with winged gables at the front, a more intimate hall in the center, and a two-story structure with a panoramic view of the pond at the rear.

• Courtyards (yuan). Gardens contain small enclosed court courtyards, offering quiet and solitude for meditation, painting, drinking tea, or playing on the cithare.

Galleries (lang) are narrow covered corridors which connect the buildings, protect the visitors from the rain and sun, and also help divide the garden into different sections. These galleries are rarely straight; they zigzag or are serpentine, following the wall of the garden, the edge of the pond, or climbing the hill of the rock garden. They have small windows, sometimes round or in odd geometric shapes, to give glimpses of the garden or scenery to those passing through.

Windows and doors are an important architectural feature of the Chinese garden. Sometimes they are round (moon windows or a moon gate) or oval, hexagonal or octagonal, or in the shape of a vase or a piece of fruit. Sometimes they have highly ornamental ceramic frames. The window may carefully frame a branch of a pine tree, or a plum tree in blossom, or another intimate garden scene.

Bridges are another common feature of the Chinese garden. Like the galleries, they are rarely straight, but zigzag (called the Nine-turn bridges) or arch over the ponds, suggesting the bridges of rural China, and providing view points of the garden. Bridges are often built from rough timber or stone-slab raised pathways. Some gardens have brightly painted or lacquered bridges, which give a lighthearted feeling to the garden.

Gardens also often include small, austere houses for solitude and meditation, sometimes in the form of rustic fishing huts, and isolated buildings which serve as libraries or studios (shufang).

Artificial mountains and rock gardens

The artificial mountain (jiashan) or rock garden is an integral element of Chinese classical gardens. The mountain peak was a symbol of virtue, stability and endurance in Confucian philosophy and in the I Ching. A mountain peak on an island was also a central part of the legend of the Isles of the Immortals, and thus became a central element in many classical gardens.

The first rock garden appeared in Chinese garden history in Tu Yuan (literally "Rabbit Garden"), built during the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE – 9 CE). During the Tang dynasty, the rock was elevated to the status of an art object, judged by its form (xing), substance (zhi), color (se), and texture (wen), as well as by its softness, transparency, and other factors. The poet Bo Juyi (772–846) wrote a catalog of the famous rocks of Lake Tai, called Taihu Shiji. These rocks, of limestone sculpted by erosion, became the most highly prized for gardens.

During the Song dynasty, the artificial mountains were made mostly of earth. But Emperor Huizong (1100–1125) nearly ruined the economy of the Song Empire by destroying the bridges of the Grand Canal so he could carry huge rocks by barge to his imperial garden. During the Ming dynasty, the use of piles of rocks to create artificial mountains and grottos reached its peak. During the Qing dynasty, the Ming rock gardens were considered too artificial and the new mountains were composed of both rocks and earth.

The artificial mountain in Chinese gardens today usually has a small view pavilion at the summit. In smaller classical gardens, a single scholar rock represents a mountain, or a row of rocks represents a mountain range.

Water

A pond or lake is the central element of a Chinese garden. The main buildings are usually placed beside it, and pavilions surround the lake to see it from different points of view. The garden usually has a pond for lotus flowers, with a special pavilion for viewing them. There are usually goldfish in the pond, with pavilions over the water for viewing them.

The lake or pond has an important symbolic role in the garden. In the I Ching, water represents lightness and communication, and carried the food of life on its journey through the valleys and plains. It also is the complement to the mountain, the other central element of the garden, and represents dreams and the infinity of spaces. The shape of the garden pond often hides the edges of the pond from viewers on the other side, giving the illusion that the pond goes on to infinity. The softness of the water contrasts with the solidity of the rocks. The water reflects the sky, and therefore is constantly changing, but even a gentle wind can soften or erase the reflections.

The lakes and waterside pavilions in Chinese gardens were also influenced by another classic of Chinese literature, the Shishuo Xinyu by Liu Yiqing (403–444), who described the promenades of the Emperor Jianwen of Jin along the banks of the Hao and the Pu River, in the Garden of the Splendid Forest (Hualin yuan). Many gardens, particularly in the gardens of Jiangnan and the imperial gardens of northern China, have features and names taken from this work.

Small gardens have a single lake, with a rock garden, plants and structures around its edge. Middle-sized gardens will have a single lake with one or more streams coming into the lake, with bridges crossing the streams, or a single long lake divided into two bodies of water by a narrow channel crossed by a bridge. In a very large garden like the Humble Administrator's Garden, the principal feature of the garden is the large lake with its symbolic islands, symbolizing the isles of the immortals. Streams come into the lake, forming additional scenes. Numerous structures give different views of the water, including a stone boat, a covered bridge, and several pavilions by the side of or over the water.

The streams in the Chinese garden always follow a winding course, and are hidden from time to time by rocks or vegetation. A French Jesuit missionary, Father Attiret, who was a painter in the service of the Qianlong Emperor from 1738 to 1768, described one garden he saw:

"The canals are not like those in our country bordered with finely cut stone, but very rustic and lined with pieces or rock, some coming forward, some retreating. which are placed so artistically that you would think it was a work of nature."

Flowers and trees

Flowers and trees, along with water, rocks and architecture, are the fourth essential element of the Chinese garden. They represent nature in its most vivid form, and contrast with the straight lines of the architecture and the permanence, sharp edges and immobility of the rocks. They change continually with the seasons, and provide both sounds (the sound of rain on banana leaves or the wind in the bamboo) and aromas to please the visitor.

Each flower and tree in the garden had its own symbolic meaning. The pine, bamboo and Chinese plum (Prunus mume) were considered the "Three Friends of Winter" (歲寒三友) by the scholars who created classical gardens, prized for remaining green or blooming in winter. They were often painted together by artists like Zhao Mengjian (1199–1264). For scholars, the pine was the emblem of longevity and tenacity, as well as constance in friendship. The bamboo, a hollow straw, represented a wise man, modest and seeking knowledge, and was also noted for being flexible in a storm without breaking. Plum trees were revered as the symbol of rebirth after the winter and the arrival of spring. During the Song dynasty, the favorite tree was the winter plum tree, appreciated for its early pink and white blossoms and sweet aroma.

The peach tree in the Chinese garden symbolized longevity and immortality. Peaches were associated with the classic story The Orchard of Xi Wangmu, the Queen Mother of the West. This story said that in Xi Wangmu's legendary orchard, peach trees flowered only after three thousand years, did not produce fruit for another three thousand years, and did not ripen for another three thousand years. Those who ate these peaches became immortal. This legendary orchard was pictured in many Chinese paintings, and inspired many garden scenes. Pear trees were the symbol of justice and wisdom. The word 'pear' was also a homophone for 'quit' or separate,' and it was considered bad luck to cut a pear, for it would lead to the breakup of a friendship or romance. The pear tree could also symbolize a long friendship or romance, since the tree lived a long time.

The apricot tree symbolized the way of the mandarin, or the government official. During the Tang dynasty, those who passed the imperial examination were rewarded with the banquet in the garden of the apricot trees, or Xingyuan.

The fruit of the pomegranate tree was offered to young couples so they would have male children and numerous descendants. The willow tree represented the friendship and the pleasures of life. Guests were offered willow branches as a symbol of friendship.

Of the flowers in the Chinese garden, the most appreciated were the orchid, peony, and lotus (Nelumbo nucifera). During the Tang dynasty, the peony, the symbol of opulence and a flower with a delicate fragrance, was the most celebrated flower in the garden. The poet Zhou Dunyi wrote a famous elegy to the lotus, comparing it to a junzi, a man who possessed integrity and balance. The orchid was the symbol of nobility, and of impossible love, as in the Chinese expression "a faraway orchid in a lonely valley." The lotus was admired for its purity, and its efforts to reach out of the water to flower in the air made it a symbol of the search for knowledge. The chrysanthemum was elegized the poet Tao Yuanming, who surrounded his hermit's hut with the flower, and wrote a famous verse:

"At the feet of the Eastern fence, I pick a chrysanthemum, In the distance, detached and serene, I see the Mountains of the South."

The creators of the Chinese garden were careful to preserve the natural appearance of the landscape. Trimming and root pruning, if done at all, tried to preserve the natural form. Dwarf trees that were gnarled and ancient-looking were particularly prized in the miniature landscapes of Chinese gardens.

"Borrowing scenery", time and seasons

According to Ji Cheng's 16th century book Yuanye, "The Craft of Gardens," "borrowed scenery" (jiejing) was the most important thing of a garden. This could mean using scenes outside the garden, such as a view of distant mountains or the trees in the neighboring garden, to create the illusion that garden was much bigger than it was. The most famous example was the mist-shrouded view of the North Temple Pagoda in Suzhou, seen in the distance over the pond of the Humble Administrator's Garden.

But, as Ji Cheng wrote, it could also be "the immaculate ribbon of a stream, animals, birds, fish, or other natural elements (rain, wind, snow), or something less tangible, such as a moonbeam, a reflection in a lake, morning mist, or the red sky of a sunset." It could also be a sound; he recommended locating a pavilion near a temple, so that the chanted prayers could be heard; planting fragrant flowers next to paths and pavilions, so visitors would appreciate their aromas; that bird perches be created to encourage birds to come to sing in the garden, that streams be designed to make pleasant sounds, and that banana trees be planted in courtyards so the rain would patter on their leaves. "A judicious 'borrowing' does not have a reason." Ji Cheng wrote. "It is born simply of feeling created by the beauty of a scene."

The season and the time of day were also important elements. Garden designers took into account the scenes of the garden that would look best in winter, summer, spring and autumn, and those best viewed at night, in the morning or afternoon. Ji Cheng wrote: "In the heart of the tumult of the city, you should choose visions that are serene and refined: from a raised clearing, you look to the distant horizon, surrounded by mountains like a screen; in an open pavilion, a gentle and light breeze invades the room; from the front door, the running water of spring flows toward the marsh."

Actually borrowing scenery is the conclusive, last chapter of Yuanye that explains borrowing scenery as a holistic understanding of the essence of landscape design in its entirety. The ever-changing moods and appearances of nature in a given landscape in full action are understood by the author as an independent function that becomes an agent for garden making. It is nature including the garden maker that creates.

Concealment and surprise

Another important garden element was concealment and surprise. The garden was not meant to be seen all at once, it was laid out to present a series of scenes. Visitors moved from scene to scene either within enclosed galleries or by winding paths which concealed the scenes until the last moment. The scenes would suddenly appear at the turn of a path, through a window, or hidden behind a screen of bamboo. They might be revealed through round "moon doors" or through windows of unusual shapes, or windows with elaborate lattices that broke the view into pieces.

In art and literature

The garden plays an important part in Chinese art and literature, and at the same time art and literature have inspired many gardens. The school of painting called "Shanshui" (literally 'mountains and water' and with the actual meaning of 'landscape'), which began in the 5th century, established the principles of Chinese landscape painting, which were very similar to those of Chinese gardening. These paintings were not meant to be realistic; they were meant to portray what the artist felt, rather than what he saw.

The landscape painter Shitao (1641–1720) wrote that he wanted to "'...create a landscape which was not spoiled by any vulgar banality..." He wanted to create a sense of vertigo in the viewer: "to express a universe inaccessible to man, without any route that led there, like the isles of Bohai, Penglan and Fanghu, where only the immortals can live, and which a man cannot imagine. That is the vertigo that exists in the natural universe. To express it in painting, you must show jagged peaks, precipices, hanging bridges, great chasms. For the effect to be truly marvelous, it must be done purely by the force of the brush." This was the emotion that garden designers wanted to create with their scholar rocks and miniature mountain ranges.

In his book, Craft of Gardens, the garden designer Ji Cheng wrote: "The spirit and the charm of mountains and forests must be studied in depth; ...only the knowledge of the real permits the creation of the artificial, so that the work created possesses the spirit of the real, in part because of divine inspiration, but especially because of human effort." He described the effect he wanted to achieve in the design of an autumn garden scene: "The feelings are in harmony with the purity, with the sense of withdrawal. The spirit rejoices at the mountains and ravines. Suddenly the spirit, detached from the world of small things, is animated and seems to penetrate to the interior of a painting, and to promenade there..."

In literature, gardens were frequently the subject of the genre of poetry called "Tianyuan", literally 'fields and gardens,' which reached its peak in the Tang dynasty (618–907) with such poets as Wang Wei (701–761). The names of the Surging Waves Garden and the Garden of Meditation in Suzhou are taken from lines of Chinese poetry. Within the gardens, the individual pavilions and view points were frequently dedicated to verses of poems, inscribed on stones or plaques. The Moon Comes with the Breeze Pavilion at the Couple's Retreat Garden, used for moon-viewing, has the inscription of a verse by Han Yu:

"The twilight brings the Autumn

And the wind brings the moon here."

And the Peony Hall in the Couple's Retreat Garden is dedicated to a verse by Li Bai:

"The spring breeze is gently stroking the balustrade

and the peony is wet with dew."

Wang Wei (701–761) was a poet, painter and Buddhist monk, who worked first as a court official before retiring to Lantian, where he built one of the first wenren yuan, or scholar's gardens, called the Valley of the Jante. In this garden, a series of twenty scenes, like the paintings of a scroll or album, unrolled before the viewer, each illustrated by a verse of poetry. For example, one scene illustrated this poem:

"The white rock emerges from the torrent;

The cold sky with red leaves scattering:

On the mountain path, the rain is fleeing,

the blue of the emptiness dampens our clothes."

The Valley of the Jante garden disappeared, but its memory, preserved in paintings and poems, inspired many other scholar's gardens.

The social and cultural importance of the garden is illustrated in the classical novel Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin which unfolds almost exclusively in a garden.

Philosophy

The Chinese classical garden had multiple functions. It could be used for banquets, celebrations, reunions, or romance. It could be used to find solitude and for contemplation. It was a calm place for painting, poetry, calligraphy, and music, and for studying classic texts. It was a place for drinking tea and for poets to become happily drunk on wine. It was a showcase to display the cultivation and aesthetic taste of the owner. But it also had a philosophical message.

Taoism had a strong influence on the classical garden. After the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), gardens were frequently constructed as retreats for government officials who had lost their posts or who wanted to escape the pressures and corruption of court life in the capital. They chose to pursue the Taoist ideals of disengagement from worldly concerns.

For followers of Taoism, enlightenment could be reached by contemplation of the unity of creation, in which order and harmony are inherent to the natural world.

The gardens were intended to evoke the idyllic feeling of wandering through a natural landscape, to feel closer to the ancient way of life, and to appreciate the harmony between man and nature.

In Taoism, rocks and water were opposites, yin and yang, but they complemented and completed one another. Rocks were solid but water could wear away rock. The deeply eroded rocks from Lake Tai used in the classical garden illustrated this principle.

Borrowing scenery is a most fundamental idea in Ming period garden making theory (see above).

The winding paths and zig-zag galleries bridges that led visitors from one garden scene to another also had a message. They illustrated a Chinese proverb, "By detours, access to secrets".

According to the landscape historian and architect Che Bing Chiu, every garden was "a quest for paradise. of a lost world, of a utopian universe. The scholar's garden participated in this quest; on the one hand the quest for the home of the Immortals, on the other hand the search for the world of the golden age so dear to the heart of the scholar."

A more recent view of the philosophy of the garden was expressed by Zhou Ganzhi, the President of the Chinese Society of Landscape Architecture, and Academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, in 2007: "Chinese classical gardens are a perfect integration of nature and work by man. They are an imitation of nature, and fully manifest the beauty of nature. They can also be seen as an improvement on nature; one from which the light of human artistic genius shines."

Influence

Chinese influence on the Japanese garden

The Chinese classical garden had a notable influence on the early Japanese garden. The influence of China first reached Japan through Korea before 600 AD. In 607 AD, the Japanese crown prince Shotoku sent a diplomatic mission to the Chinese court, which began a cultural exchange lasting for centuries. Hundreds of Japanese scholars were sent to study the Chinese language, political system, and culture. The Japanese Ambassador to China, Ono no Imoko, described the great landscape gardens of the Chinese Emperor to the Japanese court. His reports had a profound influence on the development of Japanese landscape design.

During the Nara period (710–794), when the Japanese capital was located at Nara, and later at Heian, the Japanese court created large landscape gardens with lakes and pavilions on the Chinese model for aristocrats to promenade and to drift leisurely in small boats, and more intimate gardens for contemplation and religious meditation.

A Japanese monk named Eisai (1141–1215) imported the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism from China to Japan, which led to the creation of a famous and unique Japanese gardening style, the Zen garden, exemplified by the garden of Ryōan-ji. He also brought green tea from China to Japan, originally to keep monks awake during long meditation, giving the basis for the Japanese tea ceremony, which became an important ritual in Japanese gardens.

The Japanese garden designer Muso Soseki (1275–1351) created the celebrated Moss Garden (Kokedera) in Kyoto, which included a recreation of the Isles of Eight Immortals, called Horai in Japanese, which were an important feature of many Chinese gardens. During the Kamakura period (1185–1333), and particularly during the Muromachi period (1336–1573) the Japanese garden became more austere than the Chinese garden, following its own aesthetic principles.

In Europe

The first European to describe a Chinese garden was the Venetian merchant and traveler Marco Polo, who visited the summer palace of Kublai Khan at Xanadu. The garden of Kublai Khan had a later effect on European culture; In 1797, it inspired the romantic poem, Kubla Khan, by the English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Marco Polo also described the gardens of the imperial palace in Khanbaliq, the Mongol name for the city which eventually became Beijing. He described ramparts, balustrades and pavilions surrounding a deep lake full of fish and with swans and other aquatic birds; whose central feature was a manmade hill one hundred steps high and a thousand steps around, covered with evergreen trees and decorated with green azurite stones.

The first Jesuit priest, Francis Xavier, arrived in China in 1552, and the priest Matteo Ricci received permission to settle in Beijing in 1601. Jesuit priests began sending accounts of Chinese culture and gardens to Europe. Louis Le Comte, the mathematician to the King of France, travelled to China in 1685. He described how the Chinese gardens had grottos, artificial hills and rocks piled to imitate nature, and did not arrange their gardens geometrically.

In the 18th century, as Chinese vases and other decorative objects began to arrive in Europe, there was a surge of popularity for Chinoiserie. The painters Watteau and François Boucher painted Chinese scenes as they imagined them, and Catherine the Great decorated a room in her palace in Chinese style. There was great interest in everything Chinese, including gardens.

In 1738, the French Jesuit missionary and painter Jean Denis Attiret, went to China, where he became court painter to the Qianlong Emperor. He described in great detail what he saw in the imperial gardens near Beijing:

"One comes out of a valley, not by a straight wide alley as in Europe, but by zigzags, by roundabout paths, each one ornamented with small pavilions and grottos, and when you exit one valley you find yourself in another, different from the first in the form of the landscape or the style of the buildings. All the mountains and hills are covered with flowering trees, which are very common here. It is a true terrestrial paradise. The canals are not at all like ours- bordered with cut stone- they are rustic, with pieces of rock, some leaning forward, some backwards, placed with such art you would think they were natural. Sometimes a canal is wide, sometimes narrow. Here they twist, there they curve, as if they were really created by the hills and rocks. The edges are planted with flowers in rock gardens, which seem to have been created by nature. Each season has its own flowers. Aside from the canals, everywhere there are paths paved with small stones, which lead from one valley to the other. These paths also twist and turn, sometimes coming close to the canals, sometimes far away."

Attiret wrote:

"Everything is truly great and beautiful, both as to the design and the execution: and [the gardens] struck me the more, because I had never seen any thing that bore any manner of resemblance to them, in any part of the world that I had been before."

The Qianlong Emperor (1711–1799) was equally interested in what was going on in Europe. He commissioned the Jesuit priest Father Castiglione, who was trained in engineering, to build fountains for his garden similar to those he had heard about in the gardens at Versailles.

Chinese architecture and aesthetics may also have influenced the English landscape garden style. In 1685, the English diplomat and writer Sir William Temple wrote an essay Upon the garden of Epicurus (published in 1692), a passage in which contrasted European theories of symmetrical gardens with asymmetrical compositions from China. Temple had never visited China, but had heard of Chinese (or Japanese) gardens, perhaps in the Netherlands. He noted that Chinese gardens avoided formal rows of trees and flower beds, and instead placed trees, plants, and other garden features in irregular ways to strike the eye and create beautiful compositions. He gave the term Sharawadgi to this approach. His observations on the Chinese garden were cited by the essayist Joseph Addison in an essay in 1712, who used them to attack the English gardeners who, instead of imitating nature, tried to make their gardens in the French style, as far from nature as possible.

The English landscape garden was already well-established in England in the first part of the 18th century, influenced by the travel to Italy by the British upper class and their desire to have a new style of garden to match the Palladian style of architecture they chose for their country houses, and by the romantic landscapes of Claude Lorrain and other painters, but the novelty and exoticism of Chinese art and architecture in Europe led in 1738 to the construction of the first Chinese house in an English garden, at Stowe House, alongside Roman temples, Gothic ruins and other architectural styles.

The style became even more popular thanks to William Chambers (1723–1796), who lived in China from 1745 to 1747, and wrote a book, The Drawings, buildings, furniture, habits, machines and untensils of the Chinese, published in 1757. He urged western garden designers to use Chinese stylistic conventions such as concealment, asymmetry, and naturalism. Later, in 1772, Chambers published his Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, a rather fanciful elaboration of contemporary ideas about the naturalistic style of gardening in China.

Chambers was a fierce critic of Capability Brown, the leading designer of the English landscape garden, which Chambers considered boring. Chambers believed that gardens should be full of surprises. In 1761 he built the Great Pagoda in Kew Gardens, London, along with a mosque, a temple of the sun, a ruined arch, and Palladian bridge. Thanks to Chambers Chinese structures began to appear in other English gardens, then in France and elsewhere on the continent. Carmontelle added a Chinese pavilion to his garden at Parc Monceau in Paris (1772), and the Duc de Choiseul built a pagoda on his estate at Chanteloup between 1775 and 1778, now the only part of the estate to survive. The Russian Empress Catherine the Great built her own pagoda in the garden of her palace of Tsarskoye Selo, near Saint Petersburg, between 1778 and 1786. Many French critics disliked the term "English Garden", so they began to use the term 'Anglo-Chinois" to describe the style.