The Japanese garden at Hasselt in Belgium is the result of collaboration between with the city of Itami in Japan. The work was started in 1985 and completed in late 1991. It is therefore a rather modern Japanese garden and the trees have some way to grow. There are a couple of ceremonial teahouses where visitors may take traditional Japanese green tea in a formal demonstration. Queues for this tend to be long and the commentary is in Dutch.
Although a young garden the views do capture something of the essence of a Japanese garden. The pine trees are still fairly small and very heavily supported on bamboo training frames. When they fill out a bit more the whole garden will begin to look mature. The limitations being mainly that it is not possible to grow large stands of tropical bamboo, and the wilder fringes of the park land contain northern temperate trees. It is well worth a visit.
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There is a path from the main park entrance leading down by a stream to the main lake and tea house. The garden is very convincingly Japanese from this angle if you ignore the trees in the far distance. Running water makes a cooling sound and gives the garden an air of tranquillity. |
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The view of the main tea house from the lakeside. There is another older teahouse built at the top of a small lakeside hill. It is inside this traditional style building that the Japanese tea ceremony is performed regularly for visitors. |
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Whether you want to take part in a tea ceremony or not it is possible to visit the tea house and see something of the splendid arrangement of the views from inside the building. The flooring in the main rooms is traditional rice straw tatami matting. |
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There is a lot of running water in the garden and it supports a stylised waterfall with a long stone bridge with stepping stones crossing in front of it. The waterfall also helps to aerate the water to support substantial quantities of ravenous koi carp which live in the lake. |
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There is also an iris bog garden which is best seen in the spring when they are in flower. Nearby is a demon proof walkway. Demons were believed only to be able to travel in straight lines so if pursued by one you could run onto this bridge and the demon would hopefully fall off before you do ! |
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The only demons we saw were the huge koi carp which live in the pond and fight over every scrap of food thrown to them. Like all good Japanese gardens fish food for the carp is on sale. The water literally boils with fish at the first signs of any food. Some of these fish are nearly a metre long! |
I enjoyed visiting Hasselt and would recommend it as a sample Japanese garden in Europe. Given the huge differences in climatic conditions between Japan and Belgium they have done an incredible job to make such a convincing Japanese style without access to some key plants which cannot survive wet European winters.
