Sha Rãku En

Sha Rãku En (Garden of Pleasure and Delight)

Visiting my sister and brother-in-law this weekend. They took Mrs CBL and I to see Sha Raku En an historic Japanese garden yesterday afternoon. The garden was destroyed by vandals 50 years ago and reopened earlier this year after restoration work which began in 2014.

It was created in the early 1900s by explorer Ella Christie, it is among the few surviving sites of its kind in the UK. The garden is considered internationally important because it was the first to be designed by a female Japanese designer. Taki Handa had come to the UK to study horticulture and met Ms Christie, who commissioned her to design and build a Japanese garden.

Born in 1861, Ms Christie had travelled widely in Asia and visited many countries, including Japan. She was inspired by the gardens she had seen in Kyoto and Tokyo to plan her own Japanese-style garden in the grounds of her home at Cowden, near Dollar in Clackmannanshire.

Sha Rãku En is indeed a garden of great beauty and tranquility (see extras) and I look forward to visiting it again on a less dreich day.