A return visit to Lan Su, Portland's Classical Chinese Garden

Lan Su Chinese Garden (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

"Most cherished in this mundane world is a place without traffic," reads a poem by 16th century poet Wen Zhengming inscribed in a rock formation at Portland's Lan Su Chinese Garden. "Truly in the midst of the city there can be mountain and forest."

The quote seems fitting for my visit to the Lan Su Garden on a recent sunny early-autumn afternoon. I'd gone at the invitation of a friend, music and arts writer Brett Campbell, a frequent visitor there, and was reminded how enlivening and soulful an oasis the garden is. But it's somehow easy to forget Lan Su is there, even though it's much more centrally located than, say, the Japanese Garden in the winding depths of Washington Park.

"I go to the garden at least once a month, and often once a week in the summer," Campbell told me. "I love tea and really admire the way the teahouse fits so well in the garden. It makes it a real destination for lunch and socializing, which is why I always bring visitors. sometimes I just sip tea and meditate, staring out at the pond from the teahouse. Sometimes I read, or just stroll the familiar paths, because the garden really does change with each season (there's  red period and a yellow period and a green period etc) and evolves each year."

When Campbell and I visited, he also took off his shoes to walk barefoot over the garden's cobblestone pathway. 

It was the first time I had been to the Classical Chinese Garden (as it was originally known) in several years, and the sense I had of nature flourishing all around within its 40,000 square feet of walled space was greater than it had been when I visited in the past. The garden, with more than 400 species of plants, mostly species native to China and Asia (but procured in the United States), from orchids and water plants to perennials and bamboo trees has now had a chance to grow into itself.

Pond and pavilion at Lan Su (photo by Brian Libby)

Occupying a full city block in the Old Town/Chinatown district, the garden was completed in 2000 as a result of Portland's sister-city relationship with Suzhou, China, where these elaborate gardens of water, stone, folliage and poetic symbolism originated.

Over 65 Chinese artisans spent about nine months working on the garden, articulating with cobblestones, pavilions, horticulture and water the vision of Lan Su's Suzhou-based designer, Kuang Zhen Yan. Portland firm Robertson Merryman Barnes (now called Merryman Barnes Architects) helped translate ancient Chinese means of construction for contemporary local building codes.

As Joan Kent Kvitka explains in the Oregon Encyclopedia, classical gardens in China traditionally emply a variety artistic effects with symbolic importance, all in yin-yang harmony. "Water and stone, shadow and light, inside and outside are balanced to manifest the Dao, or Way of Nature," Kvitka writes.

"The sound of water cascading among the piled rocks drowns out the noise of the city; and the fragrant blossoms of jasmine, wintersweet, and osmanthus are intended to awaken the senses throughout the seasons. Serpentine walkways, a zig-zag bridge across the lake, and open pavilions provide visual structures from which visitors can observe or wander through a living landscape painting."

Teahouse and pond and Lan Su (photo by Brian Libby)

While standing in one of the pavilions looking out at the large pond at Lan Su's center, Campbell told me a story of once seeing a hawk swoop down and snatch up a large koi fish out of the pond. Apparently, the pond had to stay under a two-foot water depth because anything deeper would have triggered a regulation requiring a guard rail all the way around, which would have compromised the design and the delicate setting. But at only two feet, the fish can't get deep enough to avoid such birds of prey. Luckily, the inherently violent state of nature was missing when I visited, and the fish were swaying gently under the lily pads.

In the 12 years since it opened, I'm not sure there has been much evidence that Lan Su has prompted change in the surrounding neighborhood or the streets that it borders: NW Second, Third, Everett and Flanders.

The broader Old Town neighborhood has certainly progressed during that time, with a University of Oregon outpost along the waterfront, numerous restaurants and shops, and the addition of a second MAX line. But the area surrounding Lan Su is, except for cars on either side coming on or off the Steel Bridge, seems to lack energy.

Outside Lan Su (photos by Brian Libby)

Maybe that's because as wonderful a local treasure as the garden is, in following the traditions of traditional Chinese place-making it is inwardly focused. For all the hundreds of plants and the tranquil watery setting inside, on the sidewalk you're looking at a big blank stone wall.

That's not to say every building has to be made of glass or must follow in lock step in facing the street; to have such diversity of places makes for a richer city. Like the Wen Zhengming poem says, we need to have places in urban areas that act as alternatives to the high-traffic spots: quiet, green places in an otherwise noisy concrete city.

Particularly in Portland, surrounded in every direction by natural beauty, the notion of bringing a little bit of mountain and forest here, not just physically but (at the risk of sounding hokey) spiritually speaking.

"It's probably my favorite place in Portland," Campbell added, "and really does give you that feeling of calm otherwhereness that makes living in the city (I live downtown) so pleasurable. Its like that intertwine philosophy - that nature should be a part of the city, not apart from it. I always emerge kind of buzzing from the tea and the sort of mental cleansing that happens every time I'm there."

 

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Comments

[Brian Libby]

A comment from reader Jeff Joslin sent via email:

I’m so glad to see a discussion of the Garden’s contribution to the City. As one who had the honor of participating in the Garden’s design and construction, it’s a place of profound meaning to me.

I did want to correct one fact, and take issue with one observation.

The depth of the pond in vicinity of certain elements was a result of a desire to maintain traditional rail heights and not add other non-authentic protective elements. However the pond depth overall was born of the desire to remove and remediate as little material as possible from the pond area. As an additional pond footnote, the river rock placed on the bed was a Lan Su specific innovation. The designers’ first desire was to maintain deeper murky water of a particular color. Given the shallower pond, our inability to ensure consistent murkiness, and the inevitability of viewing the bottom; the stone was agreed to as a visually appropriate alternative.

And now for the difference of opinion.

At the time our garden was being designed, there were no gardens in Suzhou with treatments along the street edge such as Lan Su provides. The ancient gardens were private urban enclaves, with stark walls and nondescript entries. Such a treatment would have clearly been in conflict with Portland’s aspirations for a quality pedestrian environment. After touring all other projects by Suzhou in North America, I noted that some had made use of “leek windows” such as those in your Everett Street photo in discrete exterior locations. This notion was – in turn – delicately proposed to our Suzhou masters, and accepted. Each of the windows is a unique, hand crafted (400 person hours) design. Other pedestrian-enhancing innovations included the Everett and 3rd entry plaza, and other landscaped areas at the Garden’s other three corners (which Mr. Kuang and Ms. He immediately embraced for their “borrowed landscape” potential). These elements, along with the decorative tile and granite base, in my estimation (and the Portland Design Commission’s, who ultimately approved the project) resulted in an approach that was highly and fittingly additive to our streetscape, hardly “a big blank stone wall”. The windows provide a diversity of form and pattern and craft unlike any other streetwall, afford glass-free views into the garden, but also allow the Garden scents (and sounds, when there’s music or activity within) to weep out into the surrounding streets. The design masters found all these innovations appropriate for such a garden in modern times and cities, and have since employed them similarly in projects both outside of China and within.

Jeff Joslin

Director of Current Planning
San Francisco, CA

[Fred Leeson]

Interesting response by Jeff. I always assumed the windows were intended to lure people in by giving them a glimpse of the beauty. Still, I think the garden is further proof of how difficult it is to stimulate nearby development...same result at the Convention Center, which was assumed to prompt user-friendly projects nearby. Still hasn't happened....