Garden characteristics of temple gardens

In terms of site selection, palaces are mostly confined to the suburbs of Kyoto, private gardens are mostly adjacent to the first residence, and temples can be scattered in a vast area, which makes temples choose famous mountain resorts with superior natural environment. "Monks occupy famous mountains" has become a regular phenomenon in the history of Buddhism in China. Special geographical landscape is the outstanding advantage of most temple gardens, and different landscape features provide different landscape materials and environmental implications for temple gardens. The construction of temple gardens pays great attention to local conditions, and makes good use of natural landscape elements such as rocks, caves, streams, deep pools, clear springs, strange rocks, jungles and ancient trees. , through pavilions, corridors, bridges, squares, halls, pavilions, towers, buildings, mountain gates, courtyard walls, cliffs, inscriptions and so on.

The scope of temple gardens can be large or small, and the flexibility of expansion and contraction is great. The villains in temple gardens are often located in a small garden near the corner of a deep forest, and their natural environment is quiet and far-reaching, which is conducive to realizing the religious function of "staying away from the world and chanting scriptures". The big one forms a big garden that haunts the inside and outside of the temple, and can even be combined with the surrounding landscape to form a large-scale garden environment and a famous tourist attraction. Among many temple gardens, the latter accounts for a large proportion. Therefore, the space capacity of temple gardens is much larger than that of private gardens. They often have huge space capacity, such as Mount Tai, Wudang Mountain, Putuo Mountain, Wutai Mountain, Jiuhua Mountain and other religious shrines. They have large space capacity and broad vision, which makes them have far-reaching and rich landscapes and spatial levels, making them close at hand and far away from the horizon, forming a strong contrast in distance, size, height, movement and light and shade. Religious activities consist of temples, towers and pavilions dedicated to idols and holding religious ceremonies. It usually occupies the prominent part of the temple, and adopts the pattern of quadrangles or cloisters to show the sacred atmosphere of religion in a symmetrical, regular and closed static space. Most of the layout is isolated from the garden of the temple, and sometimes empty corridors and leaking walls are used to let the garden scenery penetrate. In places where the location is urgent and the terrain changes dramatically, it often breaks through the courtyard pattern, is patchy with the mountains and blends into the natural environment. In this way, the religious building itself becomes a landscape building, which is integrated with the garden.