A Study On Traditional Chinese Garden Planting Design Theories

In the history of China, People had deep feelings towards plants and nature. They lived on plants, befriended plants and expressed their emotions and philosophical ideas with plants. Traditional garden planting design developed under such a historical cultural background and has accumulated much experience fit for the local natural conditions, cultural tradition and people's life. It is a very important way in creating natural space in gardens. It organically combines creating plant landscape with Chinese view of nature and social culture and forms unique concepts and methods. With its natural serene, harmonious landscape style, traditional garden planting sets up a school of its own and is a significant part of the brilliant traditional Chinese gardening art.With the process of urbanization and the raising of environmental consciousness, planting design is attracting more and more attention; however, there arise quite a few problems in the practice of it. A systemic study on the theory of traditional garden planting design is of vital importance for contemporary landscape architects to derive from ancient experience and preserve and promote traditional gardening art.Based on the analysis and sum-up of references and the existing ancient gardens, this dissertation makes a systemic study on the history, cultural background, designing concept and methods of traditional Chinese garden planting design and its influence on the world and application in contemporary gardening. The significance of the dissertation lies in the following three aspects:1. With references and examples, the dissertation makes a general survey of garden planting design in the past and its main features and discusses the influence of traditional living style, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, literature, painting, and aesthetics on planting design. Also an initial analysis is made on the forming of traditional garden planting's national features and its relationship with traditional Chinese culture.2. The dissertation sums up concepts and methods of traditional garden planting design. According to the relationship between planting design and nature, and planting design and social culture, two concepts are concluded, i.e., "integration between man and nature" and "art for Tao's sake". Through recordation in literature and examples of ancient gardens, five methods in traditional planting design are analyzed and summed up. They are:using site characteristics, harmony between feelings and scenery, combination of plants and environment, features of planting forms, and programming. Emphasized is the order of "site analysis, creating scenery, plant landscape, plant aesthetics". And the artistic characteristics of traditional garden planting design are analyzed from the angles of "site, scenery, feelings, and artistic conception".3. Through comparison between China and foreign countries, the national features and position of traditional Chinese garden planting design are discussed under the background of world gardening culture. This dissertation proposes to explore a garden planting design with national style, site features and fit for modern life. With excellent examples and the author's own designing experience, the dissertation analyzes and discusses the application of theories of traditional garden planting design into modern gardening.