Adding to your Garden’s Mood with a Lovely Japanese Pergola
The Japanese have used pergolas in their landscaping designs for decades. If you wish to design a Japanese-style garden in your yard, you will want to incorporate some kind of covered walkway or pavillion. Pergolas are arbors with cross-beams across the top which are often used to make formal entrances to gardens or to supply a covered area for relaxing and chatting. Although the roofs of these structures aren’t water tight, you can grow vines over them to provide for a shady retreat. While the ancient Japanese built pergolas of stone, modern tastes have changed to wooden structures which are loads more cheap to build. In addition to models made of wood, arbors are also available that are fashioned from iron, vinyl, and fiberglass.
Eastern pergolas are knock-offs of the first pagodas which were built to provide housing for the ashes of Buddha. Their design often includes straight crosspieces with scrolled ends. Thru the centuries, the structures lost their religious connotations, particularly when the designs caught on in the western world where Buddhism is rarely practiced. Although these classic bowers went out of popularity during periods of the 18th and 19th centuries when trendy gardens went thru a natural trend, they have come back into vogue in the 21st century in a big fashion.
One of the cool things about today’s pergolas is that many of them are available as kits that house owners can simply assemble without professional help. These kits can either be stock models, or you can find companies that will custom-build your design at their factory and then deliver it to your home for installation. Some websites offer tools so that you can learn about the different elements that are used in order to design the perfect arbor to fit your lawn, deck, or other application.
To give your pergola a more Oriental flare, you might wish to consider adding Japanese lanterns for soft light and tatami floor mats. You also might like to add to your pergola building plans by enclosing any part of the pergola with Shoji sliding doors and Japanese screens. A pergola will add architectural interest to your yard or terrace, and adding plants that are sometimes found in a Japanese garden, for example bamboo, azaleas, moss, and carefully-pruned pine trees, can give your garden a truly Oriental flare.
