Today’s post is a  look at what has become  more trendily known as “aquascaping” rather than the rather the more mundane sounding “underwater gardening” which I wrote about last week.

If I’m honest I’d never heard of “aquascaping” until recently, and my ignorance was revealed when I discovered there were lots of recent books and websites dedicated to it. I thought it must be a modern invention but as I started researching I discovered that the story begins quite a bit earlier ….

….with a  pioneering  book  Ocean and River Gardens  published in 1857.  The author was Noel Humphreys who trained as an artist and began his professional career  writing and illustrating books on art and architecture. He moved to London and became neighbours and friends with none other than John Claudius Loudon and his wife Jane.

Humphreys’ biographer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography recounts  ” his extensive and significant contribution to the commercially produced book… [particularly] colour printing and the design of book covers.” but “he is less well known for his other activities, despite their involvement with the culture of his day.”

 

 

One of those “other activities” was his interest in gardening.  This was perhaps influenced by his friendship with Loudon who published work by Humphreys in  his Gardeners Magazine. He also  did illustrations for  Jane Loudon’s Ladies’ Flower Garden  (1839–48) and British Wild Flowers (1844). After Loudon’s death he wrote for other horticultural journals including  William Robinson’s The Garden, the 188o volume of which was dedicated  to him.

Encouraged by Loudon he also branched out into illustrating works on  natural history and then to write his own including The Genera of British Moths , The Butterfly Vivarium , and The Genera and Species of British Butterflies  . Humphreys also illustrated other popular natural history books, often in colour. and wrote novels and other works of fiction.So all in all a very talented man.

But it’s his Ocean Gardens (1856) and River Gardens(1857), later republished together in one volume that I want to start with today before moving on to more contemporary things.The next few illustrations all come from that book.

When I first looked at it I thought this is so 19thc in style it’s not really readable by a modern audience, but then once I’d forced myself to read it rather than just look at the pictures, I realised that I was wrong.   While it is, like much Victorian writing, a bit long-winded it is surprisingly thoughtful.

Humphreys takes  a special interest in aquatic plants which most other authors of early books about aquaria regarded merely as a practical necessity for oxygenating the water. Humphreys on the other hand saw that they were beautiful and worthy of attention in their own right. He was especially interested in marine plants and he waxed poetical about them.

Nature on land has “a  green herbaceous mantle” while  “the wonders of the ocean floor do not reveal themselves to vulgar eyes.”  However “a spectator, standing beneath the water on the ocean floor, would see these features more than reversed : he would see above him a liquid atmosphere of green, and below, an herbage of red or of purple hue, exhibiting strange yet exquisite forms, such as no terrestrial vegetation displays.”

He starts the chapter on marine vegetation using horticultural language  explaining that “As the forest must be planted before its denizens can luxuriate in its shades, so  the submarine shrubbery of the Aquarium must be perfected before the aquatic animals can be introduced.”

After that  he  goes on to talk  of   its “scenery… formed by those miniature forests of Delesseria sanguine, so lovely in their tones of soft rich crimson ; and those fan-like shrubs, the crisply graceful tufts of the brightly tinted and singularly formed Madina pavonia : the tree-like masses of Callitliamnion arbuscula , the delicate Ptilota plumosa , and the purple- tinted Corallines , forming themselves into those arboreta of jointed stone”

That interest in the plants is also clear from the plates. Each illustration  is formed rather like  a planting plan for a garden border.  For example in  the plate opoosiurte ” the first plant, occupying the upper part, with leaf-like fronds of transparent crimson, is the beautiful and not uncommon sea- weed, Delesseria sanguinia. The delicate pale plant below, to the right, is Punctaria latifolia, thin as tissue paper, and speckled over its pale buff surface with bright but minute grains of black. To the left is a branch of Chordaria flagelliformis, the rich olive of which contrasts well with the red kinds of Algae. In the front, growing on a detached pebble, is the Lichenlike Hildenbrandtia rubra, rich with tinges of deep carmine, which might be made to form an exquisite touch of colour, if tastefully placed…”

Once  the aquarium garden was planted “with its vegetation… rendered it as  picturesque as possible by the well arranged juxtaposition of felicitously contrasting forms and colours, the water must he allowed to settle for some days, until it is as clear as pale green crystal, before the animals are introduced to their new home.”   Describing the result as the  “Alpine scenery of the submarine landscape” he wanted to  introduce flower-like creatures like sea anemones which are “not flowers, but animals — sea monsters, whose seeming delicate petals are but their thousand Briarean arms, disguised as the petals of a flower, and expanded to seize the unconscious victim as he passes near the beautiful form — fatal to him as the crater of a volcano .”

I’m sure you get the drift,  and there is lots more in the same vein, but we need to move on or I’ll never get to modern aquascaping!  You can trace the evolution of aquatic planting through the next few decades, particularly with the development of  the technology for tropical water environments, but it’s really less than a hundred years ago that a group of Dutch aquarium hobbyists made a move away from the primacy of fish to a greater interest in plants and underwater landscaping.

 

The Dutch Society of Aquarists was formed in 1930 and set competitions with very strict rules. They imposed a very  formal style for what they considered successful underwater gardens. In some ways that reflects Dutch formal gardens on the surface, with neat plants laid out in “avenues”  “streets” or what look like “herbaceous borders” with axial views and the equivalent of eye-catchers.   The idea is to create a sense of much greater perspective than is possible in such a small space, using plants of contrasting and complementary colours, shapes and sizes, much as one would in a terrestrial garden.  There are no rocks or driftwood [or indeed plastic flowers, sunken ships or divers either] To do that successfully requires a really good knowledge and understanding of aquatic plants, and involves, just as in a garden on the ground, regular pruning and tidying up.

For more on Dutch style aquascaping good places to start are the websites of the Aquatic Gardeners Association which has advice on how [and how not] to design one;  and Aquascaping Love’s  A style from the 1930s .  As you’d expect there are also several youtube videos  including this one on how to set up a Dutch aquascape.

However such rigid rules and formality don’t suit everyone, or every culture, and just as Japanese gardens are very different to Western Europeans ones, another style of underwater gardening entirely developed in Japan, one based on Nature.

It borrowed from established Japanese gardening principles and  ideas drawn from Zen philosophy, many of which are to be found in the oldest surviving book about garden making: Sakuteiki. which was probably written in the mid-late 11thc.   The new approach was really pioneered by just one man, Takashi Amano,   as late as the late 1980s.

A former professional cyclist turned landscape photographer Amano argued that underwater gardens should not  be “formal” or “haphazard” but resemble natural landscapes or underwaterscapes. This meant that as well as plants his under water gardens incorporate rocks and even pieces of wood. These various elements are carefully laid out and aligned, often using the Golden Ratio to depict scaled-down versions of rainforests, mountains, hillsides or valleys. As in a terrestrial garden Amano thought aquascapes should evolve and change over time as they would  in nature.

In 1992 Amano published the first book in what was to become a series of three:  Nature Aquarium World , which was later followed by several other works including Aquarium Plant Paradise in 1997. These set out his underlying principles and gave a practical  introduction to creating aquascapes,  all illustrated with his own photographs..

I don’t pretend to fully understand all of the finer details of the philosophy and theory behind these Japanese aquascapes so, if you’re a specialist and happen to read this please forgive any major errors.

Almost equally rapidly several sub-categories  of underwater landscape and gardens have emerged. Amongst them is one based on the “wabi-sabi” tradition, a Japanese aesthetic philosophy that embraces imperfection, transience and the incomplete to find beauty. As one enthusiast noted: “One must appreciate the beauty at various phases to really grasp the concept and appreciate it. To find little vignettes- little moments- of fleeting beauty that need not be permanent to enjoy.” 

If you find the concept intriguing there’s plenty about it, and its history via Mr Google but one place to start might be  JapanObjects

The term Iwagumi refers to a different style where rocks and  stones are the only “hard” element in the garden. It’s thought that if they are well placed and follow the basic fundamentals found in the medieval book Sakuteiki then the rest of the garden will automatically lay itself out.  

One rule is that there should always be an odd number of stones, to provide the hard structure, because unlike in the west where symmetry is considered beautiful, it is asymmetry that rules in Japanese aesthetics. Often there only need be three rocks, one large and two smaller, which represent the Buddhist triad. While that might sound sparse it can be very striking, especially as all the rocks are usually the same type with only a few, or even just one, species of plants and fish to complement them.

Of course there can be more but as in any rockery construction if the effect is to be natural then the shape and form of the rocks, especially any visible stratification  needs to be taken into account when placing them. The main one should be placed  according to the golden ratio at two thirds the way across the whole aquascape, and at a slight angle to look as if it is following the supposed flow of the water. The others should be placed to co-ordinate  with that, although as you can see in the example above that doesn’t mean they all have to be aligned.

If you want to know more about Iwagumi and the philosophy behind it a good place to start is thegreenmachineonline.

By contrast in Ryuboku aquascapes  the emphasis is on recreating forest landscapes underwater. [Ryuboku means driftwood in Japanese] That means the hard elements of the scene are almost all provided by wood rather than stone.   The arrangement of material is much freer, and can either be based either around a central plan to give a sense of stability and balance, or off-centred to give the opposite effect ie as sense of  instability and movement.  It can also try to replicate a small section of a forest or a scene such as the growth of tree roots on the edge of a river.  

There are other subcategories, with equally complex sets of rules, although there seems to be a lot of overlap and sometimes I could hardly see much difference! The most important, and probably the most recent development is usually known as the “Wild Jungle” style which is heavily planted, with little open space , and little or no visible hardscape materials.  The underwater gardener doesn’t have to follow the comfortable, clean lines and fine textures of the other styles. As one enthusiast says “There really are no rights or wrongs … Chaos can be fabulous!

Amano’s ideas caught on surprisingly quickly and there is now a very lively international aquascaping community which runs competitions, usually judged from photographs since many of the aquascapes are quite large and would be difficult to move.  The one exception to this judging by photos rule is the Dutch where the judges visit competitors home to see installations in place.

But don’t run away with the idea that underwater gardening is an easier option than working in your back garden. Aquascapes require almost as much maintenance as do terrestrial gardens, although the tools required are smaller and the work more fiddly. Almost all of the aquascaping websites explain what’s involved in great detail – but however complex at least you won’t need a kneeling pad  or strain your back in the process.

 

Finally, you can tell that Aquascaping has made it as a serious subject  because, like gardens on dry land, its now becoming the focus of academic interest with, for example,  this recent  paper  referencing plenty of others.  I can imagine Noel Humphreys being really pleased that his enthusiasm for underwater gardening is now shared by people all over the world.

For more information Mr Google will show you lots of aquascaping sites but for a good introductory overview a good place to start is the   aquascaping love , while if you just want to see a range of amazing underwater landscapes look at the prize winners in the Aquatic Gardeners Associations competitions.