Chinese culture permeated East Asia and, by way of Korea, infiltrated Japan. By the year 1000 ce Japan was already developing a distinctive national art best described as a stylized, ritualistic version of the Chinese. The typical early Japanese garden lay to the south of the dwelling and consisted of a narrow pond or lake orientated through its longer axis and containing an island. At the north end of the pond was an artificial hill from which a secondary stream descended in a cascade. These stereotyped gardens of the Heian period (794–1185 ce) show by their careful reproduction of magical detail that they derive from a single prototype—certainly Chinese. Variation entered only through the individual particularities of the site and the detailed handling of stones and trees.

Creativity began to replace imitation in the Kamakura period (1192–1333). Although there were many subsidiary styles, gardens were broadly classified, according to terrain, as either hill or flat. The hill garden, consisting of hills and ponds, came to be associated with Mount Fuji, the mountain of ideal form. The flat garden represented a surface of water—lake or sea—with its adjacent shores and islands. Since the scale was so small—a heap of earth 30 feet (9 metres) high representing a mountain, a half-acre (0.2-hectare) pond an arm of the sea—the intention was to reproduce the spirit rather than the features of the chosen landscape. Association and symbolism thus played a major role in the creation and appreciation of these gardens.

The scaling down of landscapes to garden size was logically continued to the point where miniature gardens were made in trays as small as a foot square containing lakes, streams, islands, hills, bridges, garden houses, and real trees painstakingly cultivated to an appropriate scale. These small, portable gardens reflected the extreme of the picturesque tradition of Eastern gardening.

Two characteristic Japanese styles are the abstract garden and the tea garden. The most famous example of the former is the garden of the Ryōan-ji in Kyōto, where an area about the size of a tennis court is covered with raked sand and set with 15 stones divided into five groups. If anything is represented here, it is some rocky islets in a sea, but the appeal of the garden lies essentially in the charm of its relationships. The Japanese tea garden grew out of an esoteric ritual originated in China and connected with the taking of tea. The tea cult, which flourished from the 14th to the end of the 16th century, was calculated to instill humility, restraint, sensibility, and other cognate virtues. The gardens through which the guests approached the teahouse were governed by severe rules of design intended to create an appropriate spiritual atmosphere, such as the “lonely precincts of a secluded mountain shrine” or “a landscape in clouded moonlight, with a half-gloom between the trees” or any mood “in harmony with the spirit of tea.” Even the precise number and arrangement of nails in the teahouse door were specified.

The Japanese fondness for systematization led them to classify garden treatment as well as subject. Three standard treatments were recognized: the elaborate, the moderate, and the modest. Once the degree of finish was determined, certain rules were followed to preserve consistency. The Daoist doctrine of complementary forms was at the root of much Japanese design, but the cult of stones is also central to Japanese gardening. The nine stones, five standing and four recumbent, used in Buddhist gardens were symbols of the nine spirits of the Buddhist pantheon; the shapes and postures chosen were presumed to have a relationship with the character and history of the persons represented. Sacred associations played a part in profane gardens as well. It was regarded as inauspicious, for example, if three stones—the Guardian Stone, the Stone of Adoration, and the Stone of the Two Deities (or the Stone of Completeness)—were not present. In addition to the sacred symbols, a whole armoury of poetic associations and symbols grew up, and stones, according to their shape and use, acquired such names as Torrent-Breaking Stone, Recumbent Ox Stone, Propitious Cloud Stone, and Seagull-Resting Stone. Beyond what they represented, stones were part of an aesthetic design and had to be placed so that their positions appeared natural and their relationships harmonious. The concentration of the interest on such detail as the shape of a rock or the moss on a stone lantern led at times to an overemphatic picturesqueness and an accumulation of minor features that, to Western eyes accustomed to a more general survey, may seem cluttered and restless. Nevertheless, Japanese gardening has had and continues to have an influence on the gardens of the West, particularly in the United States. The influence appears not so much in direct imitation of Japanese themes as in the selection and presentation of detail.

Indian

The influence of Chinese culture throughout the East was such that other indigenous cultures usually succumbed to it, but India was an exception. Western garden styles were introduced into northern India first through contact with Iranian culture, then by the invasion of Alexander the Great and the subsequent Hellenistic influence, and, finally, by the invading Mughals, who introduced the Islamic garden.

In southern India and in Sri Lanka elaborate gardens existed before the birth of the Buddha (c. 6th–4th century bce). Beneath a tree in such a garden—containing baths, lotus-covered pools, trees, and beds of flowers—the Buddha himself was said to have been born. Anciently worshipped by the Hindus, trees thus acquired an additional sanctity. Buddhist temples were associated with gardens whose purpose was to promote contemplation and whose preferred sites were therefore away from cities.

African, Oceanic, and pre-Columbian

The African cultures beyond European and Asiatic influence did not evolve pleasure gardens, although in their more-settled societies a beginning had perhaps been made. Nor is more than a love of flowers and a casual cultivation of decorative plants recorded of the Oceanic peoples. But of the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru, the conquistadores reported elaborate gardens with terraced hills, groves, fountains, and ornamental ponds that were essentially royal pleasure grounds, reflecting a need for private solace and public display not unlike contemporary gardens in the West.