Garden Restoration OAHU

The Anna Rice Cooke estate shizen stroll garden, later renamed Spalding House, former home to the Honolulu Museum of Art's contemporary art collection.  The garden was created over a period of 13 years by Japanese Christian Minister Reverend K.H. Inagaki, who one day, "inexplicably left his flock and turned gardener."  Just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Reverend Inagaki returned to Japan, where he was never seen or heard from again.  This magnificent estate is now privately owned. 

The Garden design is based on the "hide and reveal" concept, like the unwinding of a scroll. 

The dry stream winds its way through the garden. The niwaki, or "garden tree(s)" resemble fully grown clifftop trees at a distance.

A moss covered mo'o swims in the dry lake.  Mo'o are sacred Hawaiian 'aumakua.  'Aumakua are protective ancestral spirits or Gods. 

The Japanese treat the arts as one aesthetic, to know one, you must know the others.