Garden is a place of pleasure and delight
DIGGING INTO THE PAST with Dr Murray Cook
Cowden Japanese Garden
I had an odd experience the other day … a day off without a plan. It didn’t take much deliberation to come up with a solution: Sha Raku En (The Place of Pleasure and Delight), the Japanese Garden at Cowden, Dollar, described as“the finest Japanese garden in the west.”
The garden was the brainchild of one of those very impressive late Victorian/Edwardian women - Ella Christie, who travelled across India, China, Russia and Japan. All of which gave her the inspiration to create her own garden.
She employed Taki Handa, a rare female garden designer from Kyoto. The garden design was further tweaked by Professor Susuki, the very impressive 18th Hereditary Head of the Soami School of Imperial Design.
Yet another Japanese gardener Shinzaburo Matsuo was employed in 1925. He had lost most of his family in an earthquake and is buried in nearby Muckhart and is the subject of an excellent song by the wonderful Katrine Polwart!
Unfortunately Cowden Castle was demolished in the 1950s and the garden vandalised in the 1960s by local schoolchildren. However, its importance was recognised in 2012 and new life began to breathed into it from 2014 when another Japanese gardener Professor Masao Fukuhara began to restore it.
The garden is now open and a thriving charity. It’s still a work in progress and was not quite yet in full bloom when I went. However, it was an