The Comparison And Case Study On Rock Gardens In China And Foreign Countries

With special floristics and alpine scenery, the rock garden attracts more and more attention. It has a relatively universal construction pattern and fantastic landscape scene after several centuries development in western countries. However, the rock garden is just at its beginning stage in China, thus, the construction is not so canonical and the academic research focuses on the introduction of the rock garden merely. Exploration and creation of Chinese rock garden is desired. Therefore the purpose of this study is not only rendering the rock garden well understood, but also giving some suggestions about how to constructe Chinese rock gardens. Through systematically researching of rock gardens, we list some suggestions of constructing rock gardens with Chinese characteristics.First, this study describes in detail the basis of the rock garden, such as concept, types, history and landscape elements (plant, rock, garden building, etc.). We explain the gist of the material selecting and key issues for constructing rock gardens. The study also analyzes the current status of the rock gardens development in China and foreign countries. Introducing of those world-famouse rock gardens are emphisized, such as Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Lushan Botanical Garden. In order to obtain a much further understanding, a comparing between rock gardens in Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and Lushan Botanical Garden is presented, which concludes the construction characteristics of overseas rock gardens and the domestic rock gardens and gives the suggestions on developing the rock gardens with Chinese characteristics. From another aspect, by comparing the rock garden with our traditional rockwork garden, the study exhibits their essential differences: The rock garden uses alpine and rock plants as its main body while rocks are not mainly element for appreciating;However, the latter usually concentrates on rockwork itself but not the plants and rarely filling in gaps of rock with green material, which reveals that 'Chinese rock garden' should commit itself to building plant landscapes otherwise straying from its essence. We select 4 places for case study: therock garden in Lushan Botanical Garden, the 'Peony Garden' in Huagangguanyu park, 'Piled Rocks and Running Waterfalls' in Hangzhou flower garden and the rock garden in some villa landscape in Shanghai. By investigating, measuring and noting continually on the spots, the study analyzes the features and shortage of the observations. Especially, the last three cases can offer some references on developing 'Chinese rock garden'.With the research above, this thesis tries to get the speciality of the plant species in rock gardens and find out the reasons why the rock gardens develop slowly in China. Finally, 4 suggestions of building 'Chinese rock garden' are proposed, and we expect the further 'Chinese rock garden' can combine the advantages all over the world in order to create our own style: a) construction of a rock garden should accord to the local properties and cultural traits;b) combining the plant landscaping of domestic green material;c) using local rocks resource and absorbing traditional rockwork forms;d) developing miniature rock gardens.