I have a fair amount of experience in attempting to maintain a Japanese garden on a limited budget but, unfortunately, I have very limited expertise. While our Japanese garden has survived and is, in fact, about to grow much larger, I cannot claim that I have succeeded in maintaining it properly. Actually, I am here because I have been giving this issue a great deal of thought in the desperate hope of finding a solution to an extremely difficult problem. As I have looked into the problem, I have been comforted in a sense to learn that most North American Japanese gardens are faced with the same basic problems, although the scale and magnitude varies widely. Essentially none of us has adequate resources to maintain our gardens at the level of quality we would like.
Budgets range from just hundreds of dollars to hundreds of thousands.
In the vast majority of cases, though, there is not a single person caring for the garden who has the training and experience the gardens deserve. Although I cannot claim to have scientifically surveyed the field, I feel comfortable in saying that this is a fact that is as true for the gardens with substantial budgets as for those with minimal budgets. Therefore, it may be fair to say that it is the scarcity of expertise that limits Japanese gardens even more than the scarcity of money. If I have anything valuable to say here today, it is the result of nearly 22 years developing and managing a rather unique institution whose mission is to generate deeper understanding of Japanese culture among Americans, in part through Japanese gardens. My purpose here is not to do a commercial for The Morikami, but a brief background of the institution will provide context for my remarks.