从 Ella Christie 1907 年的京都之旅说起
考登日本花园（The Japanese Garden at Cowden）位于苏格兰中部 Clackmannanshire 郡 Dollar 镇附近的考登城堡（Cowden Castle）庄园内，地势处于奥希尔山（Ochil Hills）北坡脚下，被当地长成的山毛榉与常绿林木环抱。整座庭园占地约七英亩，中心是一片开阔的人工湖——湖水由天然泉流筑坝拦截而成，把对岸的树木和远处的奥希尔山一并倒映其间，绕湖一周便形成完整的散步环线。考登城堡本身始建于十七世纪，但屏蔽庭园四周的林木，是庄园主人家花了数十年陆续栽下的。苏格兰中部气候潮湿凉爽、土层含石灰岩丰厚，正好适合日式庭园中常见的苔藓、松柏和山枫扎根生长，也正因如此，这块土地后来成了苏格兰少数能成功养活一片京都式庭园的基底。
Taki Handa 与 1908 年的奠基
这座庭园的灵魂人物是伊拉·克里斯蒂（Isabella「Ella」Robertson Christie，1861—1949）。她是苏格兰人，年轻时以女旅行家闻名：1904—1905 年她独自穿越印度、克什米尔、西藏、马来半岛与婆罗洲，是近代最早入藏并见到达赖喇嘛的西方女性之一，也是西方最早完成这段旅程的女性。1907 年春她到访日本京都，花了九个小时绕富士山麓走了一圈，又遍访京都、东京的寺庙与庭园，从此迷上了东方造园。回国后她写信给当时正在英国 Studley College 进修园艺的泷·汉达（Taki Handa），邀请她到考登主持造园。汉达原本在名古屋皇家造园学校（Royal School of Garden Design）任教，是公认的日式造园天才。1908 年她来到考登，在城堡以南一处低洼地段用了大约六周时间勾出庭园骨架——开挖水道、安置山石、铺出踏步石路，并把这座庭园命名为「Shāh-Rak-Uen」，即「乐趣与喜悦之所在」。考登日本花园因此成为西方最早由日本本土设计师从零规划、又由女性主持设计的大型庭园，至今仍是英国境内极少数早期由日本造园家主持的日式庭园之一。
Suzuki、Matsuo 与战前的鼎盛
汉达之后，庭园的发展离不开铃木慈城（Jijo Suzuki）教授的长期照护。铃木是名古屋皇家造园学校第十八代主持造园的掌门人，自 1910 年起每隔一段时间就来考登一趟，指导松柏修剪、树木整形与庭园结构微调——他当年最重要的一项建议，是说服伊拉拆掉原有一座桥，改为今天仍屹立的锯齿状「八桥」（yatsuhashi）。铃木曾公开称这座庭园为「西方世界最重要的日式庭园」。在铃木推荐下，1925 年起，松尾新三郎（Shinzaburo Matsuo）从日本来到考登担任驻庭园丁，一直守护到 1937 年去世，后被安葬在 Dollar 镇附近的 Muckhart 教堂墓地。他常身穿色彩鲜艳的和服与宽边帽，被到访者误认作日本天皇，反而成了庭园里的「活招牌」。这一时期到访过考登的名人不少，包括历史学家安德鲁·兰（Andrew Lang）、小说家安妮·斯旺（Annie S. Swan）、记者乔治·布莱克（George Blake），以及玛丽王后（HM Queen Mary）。玛丽王后 1937 年到访时，伊拉还送给她一件瓷器作为纪念。
1960 年代的损毁与近年修复
伊拉 1949 年以 87 岁高龄过世后，庭园由侄孙罗伯特·克里斯蒂·斯图尔特（Robert Christie Stewart，1926 年生于 Dollar 镇附近的 Arndean 庄园）继承。罗伯特接手后曾继续向公众开放，庭园也先后被纳入苏格兰历史环境局（Historic Scotland）的登录保护；但二十世纪六十年代中期，庭园逐渐疏于打理，被人为破坏与自然侵蚀，木造结构、石灯笼、神社与茶屋相继残件不存。1980 年代起，罗伯特组织义工会打捞池塘淤泥、修补石组，到 1985 年正式将庭园对公众关闭，长期修复从此启动。这一系统化修复工程从 2014 年起进入新阶段，主持修复的造园家是来自日本大阪艺术大学的福原正雄（Masao Fukuhara）教授，他曾在伦敦英国皇家植物园邱园（Kew Gardens）与柴郡塔顿公园（Tatton Park）的日式庭园主持修复，亦曾凭切尔西花展作品拿过金奖。今天整座庭园由考登城堡 SCIO 慈善信托（Cowden Castle SCIO）运营，信托主席是伊拉的侄外孙女萨拉·斯图尔特（Sara Stewart）。日常园艺顾问包括景观设计师米夏尔·因斯（Michael Innes，曾主持阿塔代尔庄园〔Attadale Gardens〕与邓弗里斯庄园〔Dumfries House〕景观修复），庄园园丁罗伯特·格林罗德（Robert Grindrod）则负责日常七英亩庭园的除草与打理，同步负责营造庭园周边新开辟的 Stewart Adventure Woodland 亲子林地步道。
今日的庭园与季节性节目
今天的考登日本花园仍是一座以池塘庭园（stroll garden）形式组织的散步庭园：水面上的「八桥」（yatsuhashi）折线桥与「反桥」（Sori桥）弧形拱桥，借用了日本文化中人生旅程的隐喻。庭园西侧深处是一片枯山水（karsansui），中间布置着四座苔藓小岛，岛上以龟、鹤石组象征吉祥长寿，外围以「止立石」（tome ishi）界石标明「不进入」的意思。庭园中保存若干 Kasuga 类型石灯笼，其中一座来自京都、刻有 1823 年纪年；西侧尽头有一座朱漆 Torii（神社入口牌坊），通往一间供奉稻荷神（Inari）的小神社，屋顶以日本柳杉（cryptomeria）薄板拼成，木刻狐狸守护神仍安置原位。庭园东侧有一间茶屋（Azumaya）与一座旋转的 Summerhouse，是季节性节目取景地；西侧侧旁是 2022 年向公众开放的园亭（Garden Pavilion），内部展示庭园历史照片与解说板。庭园与庭园周边生长着约九十种不同的本地苔藓，池塘中饲养着锦鲤（koi carp）与鳟鱼，园内常能看到红松鼠（red squirrel）。除庭院本身外，庄园还辟有 Stewart Adventure Woodland 亲子林地步道与 Christie Walk 历史步道，为考登一带提供家宅周边的自然散步与亲子自然教育去处。
From Ella Christie’s 1907 Visit to Kyoto
The Japanese Garden at Cowden (also referred to as the Cowden Castle Japanese Garden) sits within the grounds of Cowden Castle near Dollar, in Clackmannanshire, central Scotland. Sheltered on its northern side by the lower slopes of the Ochil Hills and ringed by mature beech and shelter-belt planting, the garden covers a little under three hectares (around seven acres) and is built around an artificial lake created in 1906 by damming a spring-fed burn. The lake mirrors the surrounding trees and distant hills, and the path around it forms a continuous walking circuit. The wider Cowden Castle estate has existed since the seventeenth century, but the trees that screen the Japanese garden were planted over many decades by the Christie family, who chose the site because the lime-rich soil and cool, even climate of the Ochil foothills were well suited to the mosses, pines and maples typical of Japanese garden planting.
Taki Handa and the 1908 Foundation
The garden’s origin lies in a journey made by Isabella “Ella” Robertson Christie (1861–1949), a Scottish traveller remembered for crossing Samarkand and Khiva and being the first Western woman to meet the Dalai Lama, as well as for her solo travels through Tibet, Kashmir and the Malay Peninsula between 1904 and 1905. In the late spring of 1907 she visited Japan, walked for nine hours around the foothills of Mount Fuji, and was captivated by the gardens and temples of Kyoto. Back in Scotland she wrote to Taki Handa, a designer trained at the Royal School of Garden Design in Nagoya who was then studying horticulture at Studley College in England, and invited her to lay out a Japanese-style garden at Cowden. Handa spent about six weeks on site in 1908 establishing the lake, the stone arrangements, the stepping-stone paths and the islands, and named the resulting garden Shāh-Rak-Uen, “a place of pleasure and delight.” The Cowden garden is therefore among the earliest sizeable Japanese-style gardens in the West to have been designed from the outset by a Japanese practitioner, and the first of its scale in Britain to have been designed by a woman.
Suzuki, Matsuo and the Pre-War Heyday
From 1910 onwards the garden was shaped further by Professor Jijo Suzuki, eighteenth hereditary head of the Soami School of Imperial Garden Design in Nagoya. Suzuki visited Cowden periodically to advise on pruning, planting and small architectural changes, and persuaded Ella to replace one of the original bridges with the now-familiar zigzag yatsuhashi bridge. He described it as “the most important Japanese garden in the western world.” From 1925 until his death in 1937 the on-site gardener was Shinzaburo Matsuo, who had lost his own family in an earthquake in Japan and came to Scotland to look after the planting, the moss and the stone lanterns. He is buried in Muckhart churchyard, just outside Dollar. Distinguished visitors during this golden period included the historian Andrew Lang, the novelist Annie S. Swan, the journalist George Blake and HM Queen Mary, who visited in 1937.
The 1960s Decline and the Fukuhara Restoration
Ella Christie died in 1949 at the age of 87, and the garden passed to her great-nephew Robert Christie Stewart (born 1926, at Arndean near Cowden). Robert kept it going through the late twentieth century and the site was added to Historic Scotland’s Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, but during the 1960s the garden suffered serious vandalism and neglect, and most of the timber structures, the tea house and several lanterns were lost. A volunteer-led clean-up of the pond and stone groups in the 1980s was followed by a formal closure to the public in 1985, and a long-running restoration programme has been on the site ever since. From 2014 the restoration has been led by Professor Masao Fukuhara of Osaka University of Arts, a designer who had previously led the restoration of the Japanese gardens at Kew and Tatton Park and who has won a Gold Medal at the Chelsea Flower Show. The garden is now run as a visitor attraction by the Cowden Castle SCIO, a Scottish charitable trust chaired by Sara Stewart. Horticultural consultancy comes from the landscape designer Michael Innes (Attadale Gardens, Dumfries House), while day-to-day care of the seven-acre garden and the new Stewart Adventure Woodland is the responsibility of the estate gardener Robert Grindrod.
The Garden Today and its Walks
The restored garden remains a stroll garden organised around the lake. Two bridges — the zigzag yatsuhashi and the arched sorihashi — symbolise life’s journey in Japanese garden tradition. Tucked into the western corner is a dry garden (karsansui) of raked gravel, with four moss islands and stone groupings of a turtle and a crane, ringed by tome ishi boundary stones that signal “do not enter.” Stone lanterns of the Kasuga type, including one dated 1823 brought from Kyoto, stand beside the lake, and a red lacquered torii at the western extremity leads to a small Shinto shrine dedicated to Inari, with a cryptomeria bark roof and wooden fox carvings. The Azumaya tea house and a revolving summerhouse occupy the eastern end of the garden, while a new Garden Pavilion, opened in 2022, houses interpretation panels about the garden’s history. Around the garden grow around ninety species of moss gathered from the surrounding estate woodland; the lake is stocked with koi carp and trout, and red squirrels are a regular sight. Beyond the formal garden the wider Cowden Castle estate includes the Stewart Adventure Woodland, the Christie Walk, the Lime Tree Avenue and several shorter walks for families and children that were added or restored during the long restoration programme.
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