Pocket Gardens

Contemporary Japanese Miniature Designs
by Michael Freeman with Noriko Sakai, Heidi Kingstone, and Yukako Shibata

The pocket garden, called tsubo-niwa after a unit of measurement that is two person-sized tatami mats placed side by side, has been a part of the Japanese architectural canon for at least a thousand year. Recently, the pocket garden has taken on a new life. A new generation of architects and designers is experimenting with the concept in imaginative ways, creating pocket gardens as an urban solution to importing nature, as an individual theme set within a larger garden space, or as a buffer between property lines of a house or apartment.

Beautifully illustrated and designed with a contemplative aesthetic, Pocket Gardens offers a broad array of miniature garden designs, including Keno Kuma’s explorations of materials as diverse as andesite and plastic, Takeshi Nagasaki’s art installation gardens with stepping stones of cast glass and bronze, and Yasuhiro Harada’s mobile cube gardens—plantings in stainless-steel trays on wheels that can be stacked and rearranged at will. 

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