Japanese Garden Maple “Acer palmatum” forest on a slab

rockm

think the "problem" (if you can call it that) with this planting is the small trees on the right side are too bunched up visually and the lefts ones too far apart. This could also be the angle of the photograph, but it's hard to tell...

The diameters of the peripheral trees should be a little more mixed. As it is now, the thinnest background trees are all on the left, behind the largest "primary" trees that have the largest diameter, while the right hand side trees are all thicker than the background trees on the left. This adds to the uneven visual weighting. All of the background trees evenly spaced (this is a loose term, as it really means more space between trunks, not strict measurement) to avoid the sudden and jarring transition.

I don't really care for the "fishscale" placement of the stones, but that's a relative thing. I think all those overlapping stones unnecessarily complicates and nearly cancels out the simple lines that the slab provides.

Advertisement