Japanese Garden Resplendent - AVAILABLE

A 40 X 40 cm square acrylic on canvas of the Japanese Garden at Cowden. It is a strolling garden that borrows from the surrounding landscape. The combined effect between the designed Japanese and natural Scottish landscape is entirely harmonious.
It has been the work of three remarkable women. Ella Christie was an intrepid Victorian lady who travelled widely, on her own or just with her maid, at a time when that was not done. She was a pioneer and plant collector, one of the first Westerners to visit the gardens of Japan in 1907 to 1908. She was so smitten by what she saw there that she decided to create her own Japanese Garden back home in Scotland. She engaged the services of a Japanese female designer, Taki Handa, also highly unusual for the time.
Ella's great nephew, the late Sir Bobby Stewart began restoring the garden (after it had fallen into decay following vandalism in the 1960s). The restoration was taken over by his daughter Sarah Stewart, who has definitely done her ancestor's creation justice.