Gardens | Fordham Abbey

The Japanese Garden

A living tradition stretching back over a millenium

A Living Tradition

The Japanese garden has a living tradition stretching back over a millennium in Japan, and today that voice has reached across the world.

It follows therefore that the UK’s first sake brewery should have a fine ‘Japan inspired’ garden.

Garden Membership

General Opening

Visit our Garden Events page for details of public events in the Fordham Abbey Gardens

Members Opening

Annual Garden Members and Dojima Sake Members have access to the gardens from Tuesday – Saturday throughout the year.

No Upcoming events

A Journey Through the Gardens

Supported by the Hashimoto family and the Dojima Brewery, the garden was gradually created evoking the very best qualities. The Japanese garden can have a transforming and enhancing effect on the wellbeing of the viewer. Japanese gardens are even used as the location for wellbeing therapies. Its tradition is premised on the idea that the garden should reflect nature, yet not copy it. Nature and the landscape are understood to retain a sacred quality which translates to a garden space.

The Dojima garden follows one of the principal styles of the Japanese garden, the ‘Stroll garden’ (kaiyushiki teien). Wherein the visitor is invited to walk around the garden, absorbing the varied garden scenery as an active participant. The garden unfolds as the viewer moves through the space. Banks of planting are used determining the path. In turn it hides and reveals aspects of the garden. Water is a significant feature of stroll gardens and a sinuous shaped pond lies at its heart.

Such gardens are experienced through all the senses. Sounds transform them in the different locations and are woven into the experience. The two waterfalls offer different cadences of sound. The bridge over the water is not a traditional Japanese design but does translate a tradition from one culture to another. It’s simplicity and directness reflects the connection between the two cultures, as does the sake brewed at Dojima.

The Dojima garden creates the spirit and essence of the Japanese tradition in a form that works in its location and context. It is a welcoming place that celebrates nature in its foliage and the shifting patterns of ripples across the surface of the water accompanied by changing light conditions highlighting different parts of the garden throughout the day. – Robert Ketchell, the garden designer

The journey’s destination is the Shinto shrine (currently under construction), so the garden can also be understood as a preparation for those approaching it, moving from the secular to the sacred world. Sake making in Japan has ancient roots in the sacred use of rice and water. The fluid motion of water is an important expression in the garden. Landscape in Japanese is ‘sansui’, meaning mountains and water. The rocks that define the architecture of the pond garden are principally waterworn limestone shaped by the action of water over time. Movement and stillness in the same moment.

This garden reflects the connection that the Dojima Brewery extends, linking cultures on shared common ground. With maturity and developing form the quality of being close to nature will become apparent in the garden’s textures. It encourages the viewer to reflect and absorb what is immediately around them and what is their immediate experience in that moment. These are the core qualities that are the very fabric of the Dojima garden. This engagement is most intense when viewer and garden become as one. It is the nature of the kaiyushiki teien to embrace the viewer, and to provide a shifting fabric of experience. Subtle lighting in the garden creates yet another visual experience.