The Journal of Japanese Gardening (JOJG) recently recognized Carleton College’s Japanese garden as one of the best public Japanese gardens in the country.
JOJG, a bi-monthly English-language print publication dedicated to the special world of Japanese gardens and Japanese architecture, offers a look into the various aspects of Japanese architecture, horticulture, art, and philosophy. In 2004, the magazine surveyed experts in the field of Japanese gardening to provide interested readers with outstanding gardens to visit and identified the top 25 gardens out of the more than 300 Japanese gardens in North America. Basing their judgments of displays of intimate traits such as subtleness, natural beauty, moderation, and human scale rather than size or fame, the experts ranked Carleton College’s Japanese garden as the ninth best public Japanese garden in the country.
Carleton’s Japanese garden, named Jo Ryo En or “The Garden of Quiet Listening,” was designed and constructed by David Slawson between 1974 and 1976. Slawson, one of Japan's foremost garden designers, regards the landscape garden as an art form with only experience as a possible underlying meaning.
Located next to Watson Hall on the east side of campus, Jo Ryo En offers a curving shoreline of the dry lake, often compared to the Japanese character meaning heart, as the design of the garden draws the viewer into its solitude, to contemplate the heart within.
