Home & Garden Trees & Houseplants

Common Plants Found in a Japanese Garden

By Home & Garden Last updated Friday, May/31/2024

Japanese gardens often depict well-known landscapes or scenes.japanese tea house in the fall image by Jorge Moro from Fotolia.com

Among the most beautiful expressions of Japanese culture, gardens seek to re-create landscapes found in nature within a private, controlled space. Several elements are key in creating a Japanese garden, including a sense of open space, organic imperfection and a realistic depiction of nature throughout the seasons, which is achieved with the careful placement of water elements, structures and plants. Chosen for their seasonal beauty and symbolic or cultural significance, the common plants of Japanese gardens provide visual interest year-round.

Japanese Black Pine

Native to the southernmost islands of Japan, Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii) is among the most popular and widespread plants grown in traditional gardens. Called kuromatsu in the Japanese language, pine trees represent longevity and the winter element in traditional gardens. Japanese black pine can grow to 131 feet in height under good conditions and are often heavily pruned to maintain a small size and ideal shape. Used as the focal point of a traditional Japanese garden, this species provides a visually interesting backdrop year-round.

Known for its bicolored late-season foliage, kuma bamboo grass (Sasa veitchii) represents autumn within traditional Japanese gardens. Growing to only 2 feet in height, it is a dwarf species popular in shaded areas of Japanese-style woodland gardens. Throughout much of the year, kuma bamboo grass displays a dense covering of long, dark-green leaves that later develop cream-colored edges in autumn.

Japanese iris (Iris ensata) is among the most iconic Japanese garden flowers, prized for its early-summer blooms. Frequently planted around the edges of ponds, this species represents water in traditional Japanese gardens and is often planted to suggest the presence of a pond when there is no room for one. Growing to 36 inches in height, Japanese iris bears a profusion of dramatic flowers in various shades of blue and purple.

Prized for its brilliant orange autumn foliage, full-moon maple (Acer japonicum) is a staple of Japanese gardens around the world. Known for its small and graceful growth habit, full-moon maple seldom exceeds 30 feet in height and is generally much smaller, making it ideal for more compact gardens. The delicate fingerlike leaves show slight serrations along the edges and turn from bright green to red-orange around mid-October.

Among the oldest cultivated ornamental flowers in Japan, peonies (Paeonia) are prized for their fragrant blooms and purported medicinal properties. The common peony (P. lactiflora) and tree peony (P. suffruticosa) appear with equal frequency throughout the traditional gardens of Japan, each bearing large, frilly flowers in varying shades of pink, red and white. Peonies are exceptionally long-lived plants but bear flowers for only a short time in the early summer and so have come to symbolize impermanence and reckless abandon within Japanese culture.