Koichi Kawana

A memorial service is scheduled Monday for Koichi Kawana, the well-known landscape architect, at one of the gardens he designed. The tribute will be held in the Japanese garden at the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys' Sepulveda Basin at 10 a.m. Kawana's 6.5-acre garden there, fashioned after gardens designed for 18th- and 19th-Century feudal Japanese lords, is nourished by reclaimed water. Kawana died Thursday at his Santa Monica home of cancer. He was 60.

They came to pay homage to a man who was much like them--a soft-spoken Japanese immigrant who translated the principles of Zen Buddhism and a love for gardening into a high art form. Forgoing their work clothes, pith helmets and boots for business suits and dress shoes, the Japanese gardeners and landscape architects gathered at a six-acre Van Nuys garden of waterfalls, footbridges and Japanese black pine trees that is the masterpiece of landscape artist Koichi Kawana.

They came to pay homage to a man who was much like them--a soft-spoken Japanese immigrant who translated the principles of Zen Buddhism and a love for gardening into a high art form. Forgoing their work clothes, pith helmets and boots for business suits and dress shoes, the Japanese gardeners and landscape architects gathered at a six-acre Van Nuys garden of waterfalls, footbridges and Japanese black pine trees that is the masterpiece of landscape artist Koichi Kawana.

A memorial service is scheduled Monday for Koichi Kawana, the well-known landscape architect, at one of the gardens he designed. The tribute will be held in the Japanese garden at the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys' Sepulveda Basin at 10 a.m. Kawana's 6.5-acre garden there, fashioned after gardens designed for 18th- and 19th-Century feudal Japanese lords, is nourished by reclaimed water. Kawana died Thursday at his Santa Monica home of cancer. He was 60.

Kendall Brown, professor of Asian art history at Cal State Long Beach and one of the experts to weigh in on the Storrier Stearns garden in Pasadena ( see related article ), has a book coming out this month. It's titled “Quiet Beauty: The Japanese Gardens of North America ,” and for this edited Q&A, we asked about his fascination with Japanese gardens, how best to experience them and why our notion of Japanese gardens is not entirely Japanese. What do you find most intriguing about Japanese gardens?

It is known simply as the Japanese Garden. But to those familiar with this 6 1/2 -acre oasis, tucked away in the middle of bustling Van Nuys, it is affectionately referred to as "Gene's Garden." Since its dedication in 1984, Gene Greene has overseen this inspiring display of native plants, exotic birds, trees, waterfalls, lakes and streams - a public treasure that many don't know exists. "It's the best-kept secret for 25 years," said Greene, who worked closely with the landscape architect who designed the garden.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has officially opened the Japanese gardens surrounding its Pavilion for Japanese Art. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Wednesday to dedicate the gardens, which were designed by the late Koichi Kawana, a landscape architect and designer at UCLA. Described by a museum official as reflecting a genuine Japanese aesthetic, the gardens include such traditional Japanese plantings as bonsai pines and Japanese maples.

LIVING IN OUR ARID, desertlike climate in these dry times, we are well aware of the need to employ water-conservation practices. So it's good to know that one of our loveliest public gardens is making plans to use reclaimed water exclusively. The Japanese Garden includes three distinct areas--a Zen garden, a wet strolling garden and a tea garden.

The 6 1/2-acre Japanese Garden in Van Nuys' Woodley Avenue Park is bordered on the northern end by authentic wooden buildings, complete with floor mats and low-slung wooden tables. On the western side, less traditionally, it is bordered by a sewage plant. The resulting mixture of tranquility and sewage treatment was formally unveiled Tuesday, when the City of Los Angeles held the first of a regular series of tours of the garden at the $78-million Donald C.

In the middle of Van Nuys is an oasis of sublime visual beauty and peace. And it's right next to a huge sewage plant. The Japanese Garden at the Donald Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Woodley Park is a wonderful place to give your eyes a break from the chaotic urban landscape. Built as part of the reclamation project that was finished in 1984, the 6 1/2-acre formal garden is a graceful mix of grassy, lake, marsh and rocky environs.

The Japanese Garden has received a traditional stone lantern as a gift from Nagoya, Japan's sister city to Los Angeles. The stone snow-viewing lantern, called a yukimi doro , was presented to the Japanese Garden, located at the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys, on Saturday. Weighing just under a ton, the lantern has been placed where it can be seen from almost everywhere in the 6 1/2-acre garden.

The name of the facility--the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant and Japanese Garden--doesn't quite tell it all. Its completion in 1984 was "a dream come true," said former L.A. City Engineer Donald Tillman, but it took nearly a quarter of a century to "fight it through all the way." Anticipating the need to preserve the capacity of downstream facilities in the rapidly growing city, Tillman originally formulated the concept of an upstream water reclamation plant around 1960.