ABSTRACT
The celebrated Donnell garden of 1948 showcased a variety of the boulders which, as in many Japanese gardens, structured the landscape. In the preface to his 1938 Gardens in the Modern Landscape Tunnard credits many of his modernist leanings to Frederick Etchells and his understanding of things and aesthetics Japanese to Bernard Leach. One is tempted to assert that this gesture betrayed a Japanese influence, and in fact it just might. That the Japanese architectural style was so different, or that spaces tended to be horizontal rather than vertical, seems to have mattered little to him. A major study like Clay Lancaster’s The Japanese Influence in America of 1963 clearly establishes the impact of Japanese thought on our aesthetics, architecture, painting, applied arts, and gardens. Lancaster’s study also underscores the fact that influence need not come directly from a similar medium, like garden making.
